IDENTITY AND SIMILARITY FACTORS IN REPETITION BLINDNESS - IMPLICATIONS FOR LEXICAL PROCESSING

The influence of identity and similarity of repeated items on repetiti on blindness (RE) was investigated in two rapid-serial-visual processi ng (RSVP) tasks. In Experiment 1, the difference between correct recal l for sentences containing repeated identical items and their controls was contrasted with the difference between correct recall for sentenc es containing pairs of orthographically similar items (fish - dish) an d their controls. In Experiment 2 the same comparison was made between sentences containing repeated identical items and sentences containin g pairs of orthographically identical items (the watch - to watch). Th e amount of RE elicited by the two conditions was measured at three di fferent temporal lags. The results show that the function that describ es performance over time for the repeated-identical (R-I) condition is different from that for the condition in which the items are orthogra phically similar (repeated-neighbor: R-N) or orthographically identica l (repeated-homonym: R-H). The results are interpreted as suggesting t hat the decrements in performance observed for recall of the second oc currence of the repeated item in the R-I and the R-N and R-H condition s have different underlying causes. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.