Repetition priming and repetition blindness: Effects of an intervening distractor word.

In a simplified repetition blindness (RB) paradigm, university students named target words (C2) that were presented for 72 ms and followed by a pattern mask. A prime word (C1) that was identical or unrelated to the target was read silently at the beginning of each trial, and there was an intervening distractor item displayed for 120 ms between prime and target. When the distractor was a word, there was a large repetition cost for target accuracy at both prime durations (Experiments 1A and 1B). The cost with word distractors was not abolished when instructions about repeats were given (Experiments 2A and 2B). When the distractor was selected from a set of random-letter strings, there was a repetition benefit in target accuracy for a 120-ms prime and no effect for a 480-ms prime (Experiments 3A and 3B). The cost of distractor lexicality implicates competitive effects in event registration and ordering.