Repetition advantage: Effects of inter-target and target-distractor discriminability

Abstract

When items are repeated within a single RSVP stream, the second appearance is often missed by observers. This phenomenon is called repetition blindness (RB), and has been widely studied. In some situations, however, repetition enhances recall of the second item; Dux and Coltheart (in press) called this effect repetition advantage (RA; see also Chun, 1997). In this study, we investigated two possible contributing factors to RA, (i) inter-target distinctiveness (manipulated by presenting targets in the same colour, or two different colours), and (ii) target-distractor distinctiveness (manipulated by presenting distractors in one consistent colour or multiple colours). Two target letters (either repeated or non-repeated) were displayed in either red or green among letter distractors that were either all black or all in different colours. Item lag between targets was 2, 3, or 4 items. Results showed that both factors affected RA; same-colour targets produced more RA than different-colour targets, and all-black distractors led to greater RA than all-colour distractors. The advantage of repetition also increased with increasing lag. These results supported that RA could be found under the paradigm of RB with simple manipulation of the stimuli. Based on these results, the condition for RA and the possible relationship between RA and RB were discussed.