Repetition blindness is orientation blind

In identifying rapid sequences of three letters, subjects were worse at identifying the first and third letters when they were the same than when they were different, indicating repetition blindness (RB). This effect occurred regardless of the angular orientations of the letters, but was more pronounced when the orientations of the repeated letters were different than when they were the same. In a second experiment, RB was also evident when the first and third letters were lowercase bs or ds, presented upright or averted, even though they are differently named when inverted (q and p, respectively). Conversely, a third experiment showed that RB occurred when the letters had the same names but were repeated in different case. These results suggest that the early extraction of letter shape is independent of its orientation and left-right sense, and that RB can occur at the levels of both shape and name.