REPETITION DEAFNESS:

Abstract— This research demonstrates a new cognitive phenomenon known as repetition deafness, a difficulty in immediate recall of repeated words in computer-compressed speech Sixty-four subjects heard sentences and lists at four speeded rates 70, 55, 35, and 28 msl phoneme Each target word in the materials followed a pretarget word that was either identical (repeated-target condition) or different (unrepeated-target condition), and targets were harder to recall when repeated than unrepeated Repetition deafness was rate-limited, occurring only with rapid rates of presentation (55 mslphoneme or less), and decreased in magnitude as structure increased from lists to sentences Implications for current theories of repetition deficits are discussed