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The effect of previous trial type on inhibition of return

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Abstract

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to the finding that targets appearing at previously cued locations are more slowly responded to than targets appearing at previously uncued locations when a relatively long temporal interval occurs between the cue and target. This experiment was conducted to determine whether the magnitude of IOR is influenced by the type of preceding trial (cued or uncued) and/or the location of the cue/target on the previous trial. Although no effect of cue/target location is observed, there was a marked effect of previous trial type, as IOR was greater following an uncued trial relative to a cued trial. This effect was attributable to differences in the response time as a function of previous trial type: specifically, participants were faster to respond to cued and uncued trials when the previous trial type was identical.

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Notes

  1. Given the lower proportion of trials that were followed by the two previous identical trial types, we were unable to include target location as a variable in this analysis

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) grant to Jay Pratt. The authors would like to thank Avishai Henik and two anonymous reviewers for many helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, M5S 3G3 , Toronto, ON, Canada

    Michael D. Dodd & Jay Pratt

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  1. Michael D. Dodd
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  2. Jay Pratt
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Correspondence to Michael D. Dodd.

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Dodd, M.D., Pratt, J. The effect of previous trial type on inhibition of return. Psychological Research 71, 411–417 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-005-0028-0

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