When lust is lost: Orthographic similarity effects in the encoding and reconstruction of rapidly presented word lists.

Abstract

A reconstructive account of memory is presented to explain the finding that report of a word (C2) appearing in a rapidly presented list is reduced when it is orthographically similar to an earlier word (C1) in the list. By this account, the effect arises when the list is reconstructed from memory, not at the time of list presentation as proposed by accounts based on failure of encoding or tokenization. The reconstructive account is supported by a series of experiments that show a retroactive effect in which report of C1 is enhanced by similarity to C2; a nonword C1 can either interfere with or enhance report of C2, depending on how accurately C1 is encoded; manipulation of reconstructive processes can eliminate or enhance the effect of orthographic similarity; and a bidirectional trade-off in the report of an orthographically similar C1-C2 pair, whereby report of one member compromises report of the other.

Repetition blindness in priming in perceptual identification: Competitive effects of a word intervening between prime and target

“…Resolving evidence for a target word into one or two occurrences may continue at the end of the stream. Research conducted within reconstructive accounts of RB has provided evidence that RB can be affected by events following a target in the RSVP stream or by the nature of the task instruction that is given at the end of the stream (Masson, Caldwell, & Whittlesea, 2000;Whittlesea, Masson, & Hughes, 2005). The large effect of prime identity on response latencies in the present experiments is consistent with a period of event reconstruction after target presentation.…”

Repetition blindness: The survival of the grouped

“…It also fits with models that assume that masking from the different items in the display causes the repeated item to disappear (e.g., Morris, Still, & Caldwell-Harris, 2009). Finally, it fits with models that assume that the perceptual construction of repeated items is damaged, where construction includes the attachment of an event to its context (e.g., Masson, Caldwell, & Whittlesea, 2000;Whittlesea & Hughes, 2005). Regardless of the specific source that causes the repeated item to disappear, we believe that grouping converts the repeated items into a single perceptual unit, and thereby eliminates the perceptual problem associated with repetition.…”

Long-term semantic transfer: An overlapping-operations account

“…In consequence, transfer effects, even in the short term, are expected to show effects of the specific demands and affordances of particular processing events and also the specific relationships between those events and others that the person has experienced. Processing accounts have been offered for many of the same phenomena, including negative priming (e.g., Milliken, Joordens, Merikle, & Seiffert, 1998), the Stroop effect (MacLeod, 1998), repetition blindness (Masson, Caldwell, & Whittlesea, 2000), and the inhibition of return effect (Pratt, Spalek, & Bradshaw, 1999).…”