Repetition blindness occurs in nonwords

Abstract

Theorists have predicted that repetition blindness (RB) should be absent for nonwords because they do not activate preexisting mental types. The authors hypothesized that RB would be observed for nonwords because RB can occur at a sublexical level. Four experiments showed that RB is observed for word-nonword pairs (noon noof), orthographically similar nonwords (glome glame), and identical repetitions (plass plass). More RB was found for words than for nonwords. Prior researchers may have failed to find RB for nonwords because display conditions that allow 2 words to be reliably encoded are insufficient for nonwords, or because observers coped with low ability to encode nonwords by using guessing strategies that do not require creating a mental type or tokenizing it.