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.