REPEATED EVENTS IN RAPID LISTS .1. ENCODING AND REPRESENTATION

People have difficulty reporting both occurrences of a word presented twice in a rapid list. N. G. Kanwisher (1987) and others explained thi s ''repetition blindness'' through a type-token account, which assumes that encoding a repeated occurrence is inhibited if it occurs soon af ter the first. Contrary to that account, the authors observed in this article that performance on trials containing a repetition was predict able from nonrepeated trials and that reporting the repeated occurrenc e of a word was independent of reporting the first. It was concluded t hat each occurrence of a repeated word is processed in the same way as a nonrepeated word, that they are encoded separately but nondistincti vely, and that they contribute independently to recall. The authors co ncluded that an inhibitory mechanism is unnecessary to explain ''repet ition blindness.'' Instead, they suggest that people fail to report bo th occurrences because they cannot recall distinctive information abou t the separate events.