Repetition blindness for rotated objects.

Abstract

Repetition blindness (RB) is the finding that observers often miss the repetition of an item within a rapid stream of words or objects. Recent studies have shown that RB for objects is largely unaffected by variations in viewpoint between the repeated items.In 5 experiments, we tested RB under different axes of rotation, with different types of stimuli (line drawings and shaded images, intact and split), using both novel and familiar objects. Although RB was largely viewpoint invariant, in most experiments, RB was reduced for small (0°) and large (180°) viewpoint differences relative to intermediate rotations. However, these deviations from invariance were eliminated when object images were split, breaking the holistic coherence of the object. These findings suggest that RB is due mainly to the activation of object representations from local diagnostic features, but can be modulated by priming on the basis of view similarity.The human visual system is capable of processing tremendous amounts of information that vary across both spatial and temporal scales. In order to effectively guide the organism around its environment, important information must be detected and then attended to by conscious processes within very short periods of time. A striking phenomenological demonstration of this effect is perception of rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams of objects. For example, participants can successfully detect a target object presented within an RSVP stream in which objects are replaced every 100 ms (Potter & Levy, 1969). This ability requires the fast activation of stored object information, and flexible attentional processes that can update quickly for each presentation.One important constraint on detection of objects within RSVP streams is repetition blindness (RB). If an object is repeated within a single RSVP stream, observers will often report seeing it only once. Thus, while conceptual knowledge about the object is activated, the observer seems unable to keep the two presentations separate in episodic memory. The first demonstration of RB used verbal stimuli, both within seemingly random lists of words and within meaningful sentences (Kanwisher, 1987). In both, repeated words were missed; in the latter context, participants sacrificed sentence grammaticality in failing to report the repeated item. Later experiments used pictorial stimuli instead of (or in conjunction with) verbal materials. For example, Bavelier (1994) investigated RB for both words and pictures. She found significant RB for both types of stimuli, though somewhat reduced in magnitude for pictures. She also found RB across changes in stimulus format, so that if the first critical stimulus (C1) was a picture of an object and the second critical stimulus (C2) was the name of the object, RB was still observed. This result is strong evidence that RB is caused by activation of stimulus information that is not tied to a particular format of presentation, but rather occurs at a deeper conceptual level.Explanations for repetition blindness...

Two scenes or not two scenes: The effects of stimulus repetition and view-similarity on scene categorization from brief displays

“…Thus, the pattern of results seen here may arise from a combination of RB mediated by scene gist and facilitation mediated by specific image features. This explanation would be consistent with a model proposed by Hayward et al (2010) in the context of RB for rotated objects. That study found RB for objects that were repeated in different orientations, but a reduction in the size of RB (sometimes even crossing into facilitation) when the objects were repeated in the identical orientation.…”

“…Repetition blindness has been demonstrated for a variety of stimuli, including letters, words, objects, and even novel 2-D and 3-D figures (Arnell & Jolicoeur, 1997;Bavelier & Potter, 1992;Coltheart, Mondy, & Coltheart, 2005;Harris & Dux, 2005a, 2005bHayward, Zhou, Man, & Harris, 2010;Kanwisher, 1987;Kanwisher & Potter, 1990;Kanwisher, Yin, & Wojciulik, 1999). It occurs for identical repetitions, but also for repetitions that are visually distinct, such as letters presented in different cases (Corballis & Armstrong, 2007;Kanwisher, 1987), orthographically similar words (Bavelier, Prasada, & Segui, 1994;Kanwisher & Potter, 1990) and objects presented in different orientations (Harris & Dux, 2005a, 2005bHayward et al, 2010).…”

“…It occurs for identical repetitions, but also for repetitions that are visually distinct, such as letters presented in different cases (Corballis & Armstrong, 2007;Kanwisher, 1987), orthographically similar words (Bavelier, Prasada, & Segui, 1994;Kanwisher & Potter, 1990) and objects presented in different orientations (Harris & Dux, 2005a, 2005bHayward et al, 2010). Repetition blindness has also been demonstrated for items presented in different formats, such as the word and picture version of the same concept (Bavelier, 1994), and between pictures of categorically and conceptually related objects (Kanwisher et al, 1999), though not between semantically related words (Kanwisher & Potter, 1990).…”

Non-holistic coding of objects in lateral occipital complex with and without attention

“…1B) and were either attended or unattended. The half-split manipulation, while preserving the constituent object parts, distorted the holistic image in a way that cannot be recovered by the aligning processes of view-based models (Hayward et al, 2010;Thoma et al, 2004). To prevent verbalization of the attended object as a confounding factor we used a non-semantic attention task, in which participants detected brightness changes on either the object (attended condition) or a contralaterally presented noise stimulus (unattended condition).…”

View-sensitive ERP repetition effects indicate automatic holistic processing of spatially unattended objects

“…Key to the configural change in these images is that the two halves of the image are swapped in location (as illustrated in Figure 1). This manipulation disrupts the 2D view of a familiar object while leaving the part-based description largely intact, and has been shown to distinguish between part-based and view-based representations (Hayward et al, 2010;Thoma et al, 2004). Splitting an image arguably presents an object in an unfamiliar view, but also crucially disrupts its holistic properties: In Biederman's (1987) Recognition-By-Components theory and Hummel's (2001) hybrid model, an object seen as a split 2D image is only recognisable from its component parts.…”