Abstract
Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to the finding that targets at cued locations are responded to more slowly than targets at uncued locations when a relatively long temporal interval occurs between the two events. In studies which have examined the time course of IOR (e.g., Samuel & Kat in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 897–906, 2003), the effect is generally shown to develop at around 200 ms and dissipate at around 3,000 ms following a cue. A number of recent studies, however, have demonstrated that IOR can develop much more quickly (up to 50 ms following a cue) and last much longer (up to 13 min following a cue) in certain tasks. The present study uses the multiple cuing paradigm to determine whether IOR can be observed outside the normally reported temporal boundaries (300–3,000 ms) when attention is shifted very quickly (every 15 ms) or very slowly (every 1,500 ms) throughout the visual field. IOR was observed as quickly as 30 ms following cue onset and as long as 6,000 ms following cue onset. Implications for the role of IOR in visual search are discussed.
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Notes
It is worth noting that one flaw that is inherent in practically all experiments using the multiple cuing paradigm is that the requirement to only cue a location once on each trial leads to the possibility that participants will develop unwanted contingencies regarding the cues (e.g., having seen four cues, participants know there is a 50% chance that a cue will appear in one of the two remaining locations on screen whereas prior to the presentation of any cues, there is a 16.67% chance that a cue will appear in one of the six remaining locations on the screen). It is difficult to determine whether these contingencies also influence reaction times and this is an important issue for future study. It is worth noting, however, that in the prior experiment one might expect such contingencies to come into play more so with 1,500 ms cues relative to 15 ms cues (assuming these contingencies take some time to develop) but there is little difference in the magnitude of IOR between these conditions (as would be expected, however, reaction times are faster with 15 ms cues relative to 1,500 ms cues).
References
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) grant to Jay Pratt and NSERC post-graduate scholarship to Mike Dodd. The authors would like to thank Raymond Klein, Arthur Samuel, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript.
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Dodd, M.D., Pratt, J. Rapid onset and long-term inhibition of return in the multiple cuing paradigm. Psychological Research 71, 576–582 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-006-0048-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-006-0048-4