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Location and shape in inhibition of return

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Abstract

Inhibition of return (IOR) is characterized by a delay in responding to a target preceded by an irrelevant stimulus (cue) at the same location, or, in other words, by a response delay when the same location is stimulated twice. It is not clear, however, if the same phenomenon is present when there is a repetition of a simple nonspatial attribute of the stimulus. The present study examines the repetition of shape. Six experiments were conducted. In Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 6 the stimuli were geometrical shapes, whereas in Experiments 4 and 5 letters were used. In Experiment 1 all the stimuli were presented at fixation, whereas in Experiments 2 to 6 they were presented in the periphery. In Experiments 2 and 3, location and shape of the cue and the target were independently manipulated in order to test independently inhibitory effects (IOR?) attributable to location repetition and shape repetition. Results showed an inhibitory effect for location and a much smaller inhibitory effect for shape. The latter was restricted to the cued location. Experiments 4 and 5 tested the possibility that inhibition caused by shape repetition is due to repetition blindness. Experiment 6 contrasted the presence or absence of a central neutral attractor in the delay interval between presentation of the cue and the target. Taken together the results seem to favor IOR as the basis for the inhibition caused by shape repetition.

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Notes

  1. Throughout the paper we will use the less committal terms "disadvantage" or "inhibition" when the nature of the phenomenon is uncertain, i.e., when the phenomenon might not be an instance of IOR.

  2. We considered shape and location as two separable features of a figure. It is, however, uncertain if two figures with different shapes can occupy the same location because a small difference in shape produces a difference in location. IOR is thought to depend on the magnocellular system, which in turn depends substantially on input from the superior colliculus (Milner & Goodale, 1995). In effect there is much evidence (e.g., Posner et al., 1985; Rafal, Posner, Friedman, Inhoff, & Bernstein, 1988; Sapir, Soroker, Berger, & Henik, 1999; Simion, Valenza, Umiltà, & Dalla Barba, 1995) that the superior colliculus plays an important role in IOR. In the superficial layers of the superior colliculus in monkeys there are units that respond to two-dimensional shapes. The average receptive field of these neurons is 42°2 (Rizzolatti, Buchtel, Camarda, & Scandolara, 1980). Since we considered the distance between the outlines of the figures to be very small (less than .5°), it seems implausible that a discrimination in location between the two shapes might have occurred.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the CNR and MURST. We thank B. M. Sheliga and R. Tagliavini for their help during the study. We also thank L. F. Fuentes, H. Heuer, and an anonymous reviewer for very helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Sezione di Fisiologia, Università di Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43100, Parma, Italy

    Lucia Riggio & Ilaria Patteri

  2. Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Università di Padova, Italy

    Carlo Umiltà

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  1. Lucia Riggio
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  2. Ilaria Patteri
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  3. Carlo Umiltà
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Correspondence to Lucia Riggio.

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Riggio, L., Patteri, I. & Umiltà, C. Location and shape in inhibition of return. Psychological Research 68, 41–54 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-003-0136-7

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