Repetition blindness for novel objects

When visual stimuli (letters, words or pictures of objects) are presented sequentially at high rates (8-12 items/s), observers have difficulty in detecting and reporting both occurrences of a repeated item: This is repetition blindness. Two experiments investigated the effects of repetition of novel objects, and whether the representations bound to episodic memory tokens that yield repetition blindness are viewpoint dependent or whether they are object centred. Subjects were shown coloured drawings of simple three-dimensional novel objects, and rate of presentation (Experiment 1) and rotation in depth (Experiment 2) were manipulated. Repetition blindness occurred only at the higher rate (105 ms/item), and was found even for stimuli differing in orientation. We conclude that object-centred representations are bound to episodic memory tokens, and that these are constructed prior to object recognition operating on novel as well as known objects. These results are contrasted with those found with written materials, and implications for explanations of repetition blindness are considered.