Reverse "repetition blindness" and release from "repetition blindness": constructive variations on the "repetition...

N. Kanwisher observed that subjects shown rapid lists of words recall two occurrences of a repeated word less often than two unrelated words. Kanwisher explained this "repetition blindness" through a type/token account, which assumes that encoding the second occurrence of a repeated word is inhibited if it occurs too soon after the first. More fundamentally, it assumes that failure to recall a word from a rapid list results from failure to encode its occurrence. Contrary to that interpretation, we observed that subjects can often recognize words that they cannot recall from a rapid list. We also observed "reverse repetition blindness," when the second presentation was given greater contextual support, and a "release from repetition blindness" effect, when distinctive contextual support was given to ech occurrence. We concluded that a constructive account of remembering provides a better explanation of all of the effects.