Is “Inhibition of Return” due to the inhibition of the return of attention?

Abstract

Inhibition of Return (IOR) is usually explained in terms of orienting–reorienting of attention, emphasizing an underlying mechanism that inhibits the return of attention to previously selected locations. Recent data challenge this explanation to the extent that the IOR effect is observed at the location where attention is oriented to, where no reorienting of attention is needed. To date, these studies have involved endogenous attentional selection of attention and thus indicate a dissociation between the voluntary attention of spatial attention and the IOR effect. The present work demonstrates a dissociation between the involuntary orienting of spatial attention and the IOR effect. We combined nonpredictive peripheral cues with nonpredictive central orienting cues (either arrows or gaze). The IOR effect was observed to operate independent of involuntary spatial orienting. These data speak against the “reorienting hypothesis” of IOR. We suggest an alternative explanation whereby the IOR effect reflects a cost in detecting a new event (the target) at the location where another event (a cue) was coded before.

Keywords:

• Inhibition of return
• Orienting attention
• Spatial attention
• Detection cost
• Gaze cueing

Acknowledgments

Elisa Martín-Arévalo was supported by a predoctoral grant (AP2008–02806) from the FPU program from the Spanish ministry of Science and Education; research was funded by research projects PSI2008–03595PSIC, PSI2011–22416, and eraNET- NEURON BEYONDVIS, EUI2009–04082, to Juan Lupiáñez. We thank Ana Chica, Derrick Watson, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on a previous version of this article.

Notes

¹ Note that in this first experiment no catch trials were included (i.e., a target was always presented). The peripheral–central SOA was variable, and the central cue had a variable duration, and we reasoned that this was sufficient condition to control for anticipatory responses. The fact that the target was missed 2% of the time supports our line of thought. However, a lack of catch trials might have contributed to the anticipatory responses. Thus, in the following study (Experiment 2A and 2B) 11% of the trials were catch.

² Note that in this reanalysis of three experiments we did different ANOVAs per cue-type conditions. The fact that the cue-type variable was manipulated between participants in Experiment 1 and within participants in Experiments 2A and 2B did not allow us to carry out an overall ANOVA with cue type as another factor.

³ Note also that in detection tasks like the one used in our experiments no cue is necessary at fixation, supposedly to disengage attention purely exogenously: Prime, Visser, and Ward, 2006.