Repetition Blindness Interacts with Syntactic Grouping in Rapidly Presented Sentences

Abrams, Lise; Dyer, Jennifer; MacKay, Donald G.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00337.x

Cited by 11 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…Because phrases are fundamentally syntactic/semantic entities, this finding is consistent with a role for semantic and syntactic factors in the RB paradigm, and supports the existence of SB. Results of Abrams et al (1996) Miller, in press; Miller & MacKay, in press) and is likewise consistent with the existence ofSB, with effects of semantic and syntactic factors on repetition deficits, and with the distributed memory approach to the relation between language and memory (see MacKay, in press).…”

Section: Phonological (Manejar) Formssupporting

confidence: 52%

“…Contrary to this suggestion, however, Abrams, Dyer, and MacKay (1996) found that RB decreases rather than increases in magnitude when phrases appear within the same screen rather than word by word or broken up as in standard RSVP. In short, MacKay and Miller (1994) used appropriately controlled and conservative procedures for comparing the degree of SB and RB in their mixed-language sentences.…”

Section: Salience Ofrepeated Targetscontrasting

confidence: 47%

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Cross-language facilitation, semantic blindness, and the relation between language and memory: A reply to Altarriba and Soltano

et al. 1996

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This comment corrects some inaccuracies, points to some methodological problems, and makes three substantive observations regarding the Altarriba and Soltano (1996) article. First, token individuation theory does not explain what is new and interesting in the Altarriba and Soltano data, namely cross-language semantic facilitation in lists and a list-sentence effect, that is, a large difference in the effect of semantic repetition when identical translation equivalents occurred in sentences versus lists. Second, Altarriba and Soltano's small and nonsignificant semantic blindness effect for translation equivalents in split-language sentences is attributable to the peculiar nature of their materials, procedures, analyses, and experimental design. These problems nullify their conclusion that semantic blindness does not occur, and we discuss several clear cases where semantic blindness has been demonstrated. Finally,we suggest an explanation for Altarriba and Soltano's unexplained effects (cross-language facilitation and the list-sentence effect) and show why these effects are important for the general issue of relations between language and memory.This commentary doesn't just discuss flaws and inaccuracies in the target article (Altarriba & Soltano, 1996). It also examines three new and unexplained effects in the Altarriba and Soltano data: cross-language facilitation in lists, a list-sentence difference, and the nonoccurrence ofsemantic blindness (SB) in the split-language sentences of their Experiment 1B. The commentary then addresses some theoretical and methodological implications ofthese effects and shows why they are important for anyone interested in the relation between language and memory. CROSS-LANGUAGE FACILITATIONCross-language facilitation is the unexplained new effect that appeared in Altarriba and Soltano (1996, Experiment 2), where the procedure was as follows: Proficient bilinguals immediately recalled rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) lists consisting critically of three words that were preceded and followed by masking stimuli (symbol strings) that participants were instructed to ignore. If the first and last words in the lists are labeled the "pretarget" and "target," respectively, the dependent variable was recall of the target (e.g., drive) as a function of whether its pretarget was identical (e.g., drive-drive), semantically identical (i.e., a translation equivalent, as in

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Section: Phonological (Manejar) Formssupporting

confidence: 52%

Section: Salience Ofrepeated Targetscontrasting

confidence: 47%

Cross-language facilitation, semantic blindness, and the relation between language and memory: A reply to Altarriba and Soltano

et al. 1996

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“…Abrams, Dyer, and MacKay (1996) have also demonstrated that RB is sensitive to the syntactic structure of sentences when words are presented in groups. However, this sensitivity to stimulus and task context is also compatible with Potter's (1999) elaboration of how CSTM influences the processes involved in converting activated types into structured tokens.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Repetition blindness in sentence contexts: Not just an attribution?

Bond¹,

Andrews

2008

Memory & Cognition

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Repetition blindness (RB) refers to the failure to report both occurrences of a repeated item in a series of rapidly presented visual stimuli. For instance, the sentence When she spilled the ink there was ink all over, presented word by word at a rate of around 100 msec/word, may be reported as "When she spilled the ink there was all over" (Kanwisher, 1987), even though the sequence is nongrammatical. RB also occurs for repeated items in lists of words and pictures (see Coltheart, 1999, for reviews), but the phenomenon is particularly striking in sentences, where its occurrence generally fails to respect the constraints of coherence or syntax. This has contributed to accounts that locate the phenomenon at the lexical level, rather than at the later stages of memory and recall. In the experiments reported here, novel variations of the standard RB sentence-processing paradigm were used to shed further light on the relative contribution of bottom-up and top-down processes to RB and, more generally, on the role of lexical activation in sentence processing. Kanwisher's (1987) original interpretation of RB drew upon the distinction between types and tokens. Reporting the identity of an item in a stimulus sequence requires not only activation of the existing representation of the item's type representation in memory, but also creation of a token representing the occurrence of that type in the processing episode (Kahneman & Treisman, 1984). For example, the conceptual processing required to build a coherent structure from the words of a sentence requires more than activation of word types in lexical memory; comprehension and recall depend on establishing tokens of these words and the sentential relationships between them in that specific sentence. In this framework, RB is the consequence of a perceptual limitation that impairs the rapid creation of separate tokens for two occurrences of the type. Type-Token Accounts of RBThere are two major variants of this type-token account that propose different sources for RB. According to the type refractoriness hypothesis, RB is due to the activation dynamics of type nodes, rather than to a problem with token formation or binding. The representation of a particular stimulus undergoes a period of reduced sensitivity immediately after firing, by analogy with the refractoriness of neurons. Accordingly, if the stimulus appears twice in close succession, the second occurrence may be unable to increase the node's activation enough to be recognized or induce a response. The second class of models attributes RB to problems in token individuation. Even though the two separate occurrences are both "recognized" at the type level, formation of a second token from a single type is briefly inhibited after the first token is individuated (e.g., Kanwisher, 1987).The type refractoriness hypothesis has been formalized in dynamical models based on a signal detection approach that implement a "rudimentary form of adaptation" (Bavelier & Jordan, 1992, p. 883). Bavelier and Jordan's model assumes that ...

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“…This is most clearly seen in RSVP sequences that, when read together, make a complete, coherent sentence only when the repeated word is detected, yet participants still consistently fail to report it (Bavelier, 1994;Bond & Andrews, 2008;Harris & Morris, 1998;Kanwisher, 1987;Kanwisher & Potter, 1990;Kanwisher & Potter, 1998;MacKay & Miller, 1994;Morris & Harris, 2002;. One exception to this was reported by Abrams, Dyer and MacKay (1996), who found that when sentences presented in an RSVP paradigm were either presented as syntactically correct phrases (e.g., "They wanted/to play sports/but sports/were not allowed") or syntactically incorrect phrases (e.g., "They wanted to/play sports but/sports were not/allowed"),…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…They hypothesize this kind of grouping is akin to that found for spoken words, arguing that RB likely exists for auditory stimuli, but is prevented by the phrase grouping that occurs with naturally spoken sentences (Abrams et al, 1996). Goldfarb & Treisman (2011);Kanwisher (1991); Kanwisher et al (1995) compared to those employing RSVP (Kanwisher, 1991;Luo & Caramazza, 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survival of the grouped, or three’s a crowd? Repetition blindness in groups of letters and words

Jackson

2015

Mem Cogn

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Repetition Blindness Interacts with Syntactic Grouping in Rapidly Presented Sentences

Cited by 11 publications

References 9 publications

Cross-language facilitation, semantic blindness, and the relation between language and memory: A reply to Altarriba and Soltano

Cross-language facilitation, semantic blindness, and the relation between language and memory: A reply to Altarriba and Soltano

Repetition blindness in sentence contexts: Not just an attribution?

Survival of the grouped, or three’s a crowd? Repetition blindness in groups of letters and words

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