LAUSR

ABSTRACT Repetition blindness (RB) is the failure to report the second occurrence of repeated items in a rapid serial visual presentation stream. The two-stage model of RB by Bavelier (1994) states that more properties shared between the repeated items lead to a larger RB effect. We used RB paradigm to examine the position (left or right) and the function (semantic or phonetic) of radicals in Chinese character recognition. Compared to the repeated radicals with the same position and function, RB was reduced when they were in different positions (Experiment 1A), but not when they had different functions (Experiment 1B). Similar RB-effect was observed when only one, or both, of the repeated radicals provided valid semantic or phonetic cues to characters (Experiments 2A and 2B). These results suggest that radicals are encoded with position but not function information. The radical function is likely implemented in lateral connections between semantic and phonological representations of characters.