Repetition blindness and aging: Evidence for a binding deficit involving a single, theoretically specified connection.

Abstract

This study tested 2 main hypotheses for explaining repetition blindness (RB), a difficulty in encoding and recalling rapidly presented repeated words in sentences. Under 1 hypothesis, RB reflects an inhibitory process and should be more pronounced in young than in older Ss, who typically exhibit diminished inhibitory processes. Under the second hypothesis, RB reflects a failure to bind a specific connection: The second connection from the single node for encoding a repeated word is difficult to form under time pressure. Under this binding hypothesis, young adults should exhibit less RB than older adults, who typically require more time to form new connections. Results supported a version of the binding hypothesis but contradicted the inhibition hypothesis, and did not support hypotheses whereby RB reflects either a refractory effect or perceptual fusion of the repeated words.

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

“…The third surprising result in Altarriba and Soltano (1996) is the small (3%) and nonsignificant SB effect in the split-language sentences of Experiment IB, as compared with the much larger (9%) SB effect in MacKay and Miller (1994). On the basis of their nonsignificant result, Altarriba and Soltano concluded that their data "contradict" and "fail to support" the results of MacKay and Miller, a conclusion that is flawed on several counts.…”

“…Moreover, pretargets and targets in their materials were always in different languages, increasing the salience of translation equivalents in the repeated target condition, and thereby reducing SB. In contrast, MacKay and Miller's (1994) materials consisted of mixed-language sentences, where most of the words appeared in one language, but a variable number of words appeared in the other language, as in, say, "Mike aprendi6 to drive a car and began manejar to work" (translation: "Mike learned to drive a car and began to drive to work."). This mixed-language procedure is essential in attempting to equate the salience of the target (and its relation to the pretarget) in RB and SB sentences containing repeated versus unrepeated targets.…”

“…Slower presentation rates: Repetition deficits occur only within a limited range of presentation rates, and in general, RB decreases in magnitude at slower rates (see, e.g., MacKay & Miller, in press;MacKay, Miller, & Schuster, 1994;Miller & MacKay, in press). Because presentation rate was slower (133 msec/word) in Altarriba and Soltano (1996, Experiment 1B) than in MacKay and Miller (1994)-that is, 80 msec/word on the average-the slower rate may have reduced the relative degree ofSB in Altarriba and Soltano (Experiment IB). Use of 117 msec/word in Experiment lA rather than 133 msec/word may likewise have increased the relative degree of RB in Experiment IA.…”

“…Mean lag in MacKay and Miller (1994) Miller, in press). Recent studies of RB and related phenomena such as the attentional blink have also adopted conditional measures for another reason, namely Kanwisher's (1991, Experiment 5) demonstration that facilitation rather than inhibition occurs when participants do not attend to, perceive, or recall the pretarget for a subsequently repeated target (for detailed discussion, see MacKay et aI., 1994).…”

Sequencing, Speech Production, and Selective Effects of Aging on Phonological and Morphological Speech Errors.

“…Second, our hypothesis applies to phonology, whereas Zacks and Hasher (1997) exempt phonology and other automatic processes from age-linked inhibition deficits. Third, we define inhibition theoretically, whereas Hasher and Zacks define inhibition in terms of task-specific empirical effects (e.g., interference in negative priming and Stroop tasks), a problematic definition because processes other than inhibition can cause interference (see, e.g., MacKay, Miller, & Schuster, 1994).…”