title: Repetition blindness for words yet repetition advantage for nonwords.
abstract: Accuracy of report of words in a rapidly presented sequence is reduced if 1 word is a repetition of a previous word. This is repetition blindness. If, however, the items are pronounceable nonwords, or pseudohomophones, repetition improves recall. A repetition advantage for nonwords also occurs when subjects merely count the items or when the item between the critical nonwords is a familiar word. Familiarizing subjects with the nonwords improved the level of recall but did not affect the repetition advantage. These results are considered in relation to token individuation and other accounts of repetition blindness. The findings suggest that for identical linguistic stimuli the types bound to episodic memory tokens that are vulnerable to repetition blindness are lexical units.
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia. veronika.coltheart@mq.edu.au
authors.forename: Veronika
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Coltheart
authors.forename: Robyn
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Langdon
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D012691:Serial Learning; D014706:Verbal Learning