Abstract

Both color repetition blindness (Kanwisher, 1991) and the negative color repetition effect (Park, 1988) refer to a poorer recognition of a repeated color than a nonrepeated color in perceptually-limited viewing conditions. Experiment 1 tested an input negation hypothesis that proposed that color repetition blindness (Kanwisher, Driver & Machadol, 1993) results from the negation of a repeated input based on brightness differences, rather than from the failure in token individuation. Experiment 2 explored whether attentional move is responsible for the negative color repetition effect as reported by Kim and Park (1994). These two experiments obtained results indicating that either color repetition blindness or the negative color repetition effect arises from input negation or attentional move. Experiments 3 and 4 examined which component of attention, engagement, move or disengagement, causes color repetition blindness by varying precue locations, distance between color inputs, and also by varying the exposure duration of each input. These two experiments showed that attentional disengagement is the most likely cause of color repetition blindness.