Two bs or not two Bs? A signal detection theory analysis of repetition blindness in a counting task.

Full Abstract

Stimulus repetition usually benefits performance. A notable exception is repetition blindness (RB), in which subjects fail to report a repeated stimulus in a rapid serial visual presentation. Theories differ in attributing RB to either perceptual encoding or memory retrieval and to impaired discrimination versus response bias. In the present study, subjects judged whether one or two letters were imbedded in sequences of digits. Unlike previous studies, false guesses of two unrepeated letters were distinguished from false guesses of two repeated letters. When repeated- and unrepeated-letter trials were randomly intermixed (Experiment 1), RB was entirely attributable to response bias. However, when they were separately blocked (Experiments 2 and 3), RB was manifested in discriminability (d'). The results support perceptual-encoding accounts of RB but indicate that effects on discriminability depend on subjects' processing strategies.

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Author information

Author/s: Anderson, Christopher J (CJ); Neill, W Trammell (WT);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York 12222, USA.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Perception & psychophysics (Percept Psychophys), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jul; vol 64 (issue 5) : pp 732-40

Dates: Created 2002/08/30; Completed 2002/09/25; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12201332, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Cognition
Humans
Memory

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