Forward and backward repetition blindness in speed and accuracy.

Full Abstract

Repetition blindness (RB) was investigated in a new paradigm in which effects could stem from items preceding or following a target. Speeded-response tasks were used in which 3 critical items (C1, C2, and C3) were sequentially presented on each trial. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked to judge whether C2 (the target) was present on each trial. Forward RB was examined in Experiment 1 via manipulation of whether C1 and C2 were repeated and backward RB was probed in Experiment 2 via manipulation of whether C2 and C3 were repeated. RB was successfully demonstrated in both experiments: Target presence judgments were slower and less accurate with repeated conditions than with unrepeated conditions. Experiment 3 involved a semantic categorization task in which participants had to judge whether C2 was a letter or a digit. Manipulating forward and backward repetition produced reliable effects on both reaction times and accuracy. The results are consistent with the idea that RB is due to failure in token individualization rather than type refractory problems or failure in memory retrieval. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Author information

Author/s: Wong, Kin Fai Ellick (KF); Chen, Hsuan-Chih (HC);

Affiliation: Department of Management of Organizations, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong. mnewong(-atsign-)ust.hk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance (J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Jun; vol 35 (issue 3) : pp 778-86

Dates: Created 2009/06/02; Completed 2009/07/20;

PMID: 19485691, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 8/21/2009, IMS Date: )

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