Differential repetition blindness with emotion and emotion-laden word types

Abstract

The repetition blindness effect (RB; Kanwisher, 1987) is the finding that under certain conditions, repeated words are recalled more poorly than unrepeated words. Repetition blindness is found when using the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm, where stimuli are briefly and sequentially presented (e.g., 75–125 ms). When comparing RB with negative emotional words and neutral words, Silvert, Naveteur, Honoré, Sequeira, and Boucart (2004) found that emotional words produced a larger RB effect. However, emotion words and emotion-laden words were unsystematically intermixed. The current studies compared RB with emotion words that label emotional states (e.g., hate), emotion-laden words that have emotional connotations (e.g., coffin), and neutral words (e.g., lantern). In two experiments, emotion words consistently led to a larger RB effect than emotion-laden and neutral words. The current study provides evidence that emotion and emotion-laden words are processed differently and that semantic information does indeed influence the RB effect.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• Repetition blindness
• Semantic
• Perception

This work was submitted by the first author in partial fulfillment of the Master's of Arts Degree in Cognitive/Developmental Psychology. This research was supported by funding from the Graduate Student Organization and the Graduate Student Employee Union of the University at Albany. We would like to thank Master's Thesis committee member Dr. Frank R. Vellutino for his expertise and suggestions. We also thank undergraduate assistants Emilia Alsen, Denise Cruz, Tara DeRudder, Salvatrice Lo Piccolo, Ines Martinovic, Renee Pangburn, and Corey Rashkover for their help with data collection.