Abstract
Conventional wisdom holds that a nonpredictive peripheral cue produces a biphasic response time (RT) pattern: early facilitation at the cued location, followed by an RT delay at that location. The latter effect is called inhibition of return (IOR). In two experiments, we report that IOR occurs at a cued location far earlier than was previously thought, and that it is distinct from attentional orienting. In Experiment 1, IOR was observed early (i.e., within 50 msec) at the cued location, when the cue predicted that a detection target would occur at another location. In Experiment 2, this early IOR effect was demonstrated to occur for target detection, but not for target identification. We conclude that previous failures to observe early IOR at a cued location may have been due to attention being directed to the cued location and thus “masking” IOR.
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This research was supported in part by NSERC Grants 52-77162 and 52-75095, and Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Grant 51-61019 awarded to A.K., and by NIH predoctoral Grant F31 MH11357-01 to S.D. and NIH Grant R01 NH 41544 to Robert Rafal.
—Accepted by previous editor, Myron L. Braunstein
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Danziger, S., Kingstone, A. Unmasking the inhibition of return phenomenon. Perception & Psychophysics 61, 1024–1037 (1999). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207610
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207610