Abstract
This study reports effects of meaning and emotion (taboo vs. neutral words) on an illusory word (IW) phenomenon linked to orthographic repetition blindness (RB). Participants immediately recalled rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) lists consisting of two critical words (C1 and C2) containing shared letters, followed by a word fragment: for example, lake (C1) brake (C2) ush (fragment). For neutral critical words, participants often recalled C1, but not C2 or the fragment, reporting instead a nonoccurring or illusory word: here, brush (a blend of C2 and the fragment). Forward RB (defined as reduced report of orthographically similar C2s) was more common for neutral than for taboo C2s, and taboo IWs were reported significantly more often than were neutral IWs. Moreover, when both C2 and the potential IW were taboo, a new phenomenon emerged: Participants reliably reported both the IW and the intact C2. These and other results supported a binding theory of the IW phenomenon and orthographic RB.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Samuel A. MacKay Memorial Research Fund and thank Erin Allison, Pamela Crombie, Wingyun Mak, and Charlotte Nolan for general assistance. We also thank Rick Laughlin and two journal reviewers (Catherine Harris and Bruce Whittlesea) for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.
This paper is dedicated to Wayne Wickelgren (1938–).
Notes
This result is remarkable considering that some participants may have been biased against reporting taboo words. For example, one participant reported no taboo words (real or illusory), despite knowing that taboo words would appear and despite refusing the offer to participate in another experiment without taboo words.
The original MacKay et al. (Citation2004) word-before effect involved immediate recall of lists containing ortho-graphically unrelated words presented at 170 ms/word, with two taboo words intermixed among four neutral words at unpredictable positions in each list. Tulving (Citation1969) reported a similar “retrograde amnesia effect” or reduction in recall of the prior word during quasi-free recall of RSVP lists containing a single “high priority” item.
However, phonology may play little role in fragment perception because the time required to produce pronounceable (let alone unpronounceable) fragments probably exceeds the entire duration of an IW list presented at 100 ms/frame. Moreover, report of the familiar C1s and C2s in IW experiments does not require new top-down phonological connections because these connections were formed when these words were learned during childhood.