A sublexical locus for repetition blindness: Evidence from illusory words.

Abstract

Six experiments used an illusory words paradigm to demonstrate that repetition blindness (RB) in orthographically similar words affects only the words' shared letters. Rapid serial visual presentation streams of words and word fragments allowed the unique letters of the 2nd critical word to combine with a subsequent fragment to create a word, as in rock shock ell. The illusory word shell was reported 2-3 times as frequently in RB conditions as in control conditions. Further experiments ruled out letter migration, contour summation, and differences in processing load as explanations for the results. These findings are inconsistent with current proposals that orthographic RB represents similarity inhibition or lexical competition or that it reflects problems with word-level token individuation.

Illusory words created by repetition blindness: A technique for probing sublexical representations

“…In the mismatch condition, illusory word report for the repeated condition was 4% versus 2% for the unrepeated condition. In prior work (Morris & Harris, 1999), we obtained high illusory word report for stimuli in which the recombining letters moved from the beginning of W2, as in pain grain avy ® gravy. This suggests that factors specific to the present materials and procedure resulted in low illusory word report, not a general difficulty in creating illusory words from letters that migrate from the beginning of W2 to the beginning of the fragment.…”

“…The illusory words paradigm (Morris & Harris, 1999) also provides evidence that repetition blindness in orthographically similar words has a sublexical locus, affecting only the words' shared letters. In the lake BRAKE USH sequence, report of brush appears to occur because recognition of the AKE in BRAKE is disrupted by its prior occurrence in lake.…”

“…Words and word fragments presented via rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP; Forster, 1970) will combine with each other to create "illusory words" (Morris & Harris, 1999). That is, observers will report seeing words that have not been presented.…”

“…Because the word fragment USH is also activating a cohort of words, the word brush has some probability of being activated and passing its recognition threshold. In a series of experiments, Morris and Harris (1999) When two orthographically similar words are displayed using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), the repeated letters in the second critical word (W2) are not detected, leading to a deficit in reporting this word, a phenomenon known as repetition blindness (RB). The unrepeated letters in W2 do appear to be detected and available to feed activation to words compatible with them (Morris & Harris, 1999).…”

“…In a series of experiments, Morris and Harris (1999) When two orthographically similar words are displayed using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), the repeated letters in the second critical word (W2) are not detected, leading to a deficit in reporting this word, a phenomenon known as repetition blindness (RB). The unrepeated letters in W2 do appear to be detected and available to feed activation to words compatible with them (Morris & Harris, 1999). When a fragment was strategically placed in the RSVP stream, as in GROW throw ank, observers reported seeing thank more often than in the control condition BEAT throw ank.…”