Ng. Kanwisher et al., SIGNAL-DETECTION ANALYSES OF REPETITION BLINDNESS, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 22(5), 1996, pp. 1249-1260
Three experiments used a signal detection model to demonstrate that re
petition blindness (N. Kanwisher, 1987) reflects a reduction in sensit
ivity (d') for the detection of repeated compared with unrepeated visu
al targets. In Experiment 1, repetition blindness (RB) was found for r
apid serial visual presentation (RSVP) letter sequences, whether the v
isual targets were specified by category membership (vowels) or as 1 o
f 2 prespecified letters (e.g., A or O). In Experiment 2, RB was found
to a similar degree even when the Ist critical item was displayed for
twice as long as the other list items, although overall performance w
as considerably improved. Experiment 3 found RB for displays containin
g just 2 simultaneously presented letters. These results support Kanwi
sher's (1987) account of RB as a genuine perceptual effect, and rule o
ut alternative accounts of RB as the result of response bias, output i
nterference, or guessing biases.