TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL REPETITION BLINDNESS - EFFECTS OF PRESENTATION MODE AND REPETITION LAG ON THE PERCEPTION OF REPEATED ITEMS

In this study, participants were asked to identify briefly presented 5 -letter (Experiments 1-3) or 2-letter (Experiment 4) strings. Identica l items in a repeated trial were identified worse than their counterpa rts in a nonrepeated trial, indicating repetition blindness (RE; N. G. Kanwisher, 1987). In Experiment 1, RE occurred regardless of whether items were presented successively or simultaneously. In Experiments 2- 4, RE occurred regardless of whether 2 simultaneously presented items were spatially close or far apart. The magnitude of RE, however, varie d with presentation mode and repetition lag: RE was smaller in simulta neous than successive presentation, and RE increased and then decrease d with the number of items separating 2 identical ones. These results provide important constraints in the interpretation of RE. A model tha t attributes RE to the refractoriness of perceptual recognition units is proposed.