Reverse “repetition blindness” and release from “repetition blindness”: Constructive variations on the “repetition blindness” effect

Abstract

N. Kanwisher observed that subjects shown rapid lists of words recall two occurrences of a repeated word less often than two unrelated words. Kanwisher explained this “repetition blindness” through a type/token account, which assumes that encoding the second occurrence of a repeated word is inhibited if it occurs too soon after the first. More fundamentally, it assumes that failure to recall a word from a rapid list results from failure to encode its occurrence. Contrary to that interpretation, we observed that subjects can often recognize words that they cannot recall from a rapid list. We also observed “reverse repetition blindness,” when the second presentation was given greater contextual support, and a “release from repetition blindness” effect, when distinctive contextual support was given to each occurrence. We concluded that a constructive account of remembering provides a better explanation of all of the effects.