Perceptual and motor inhibition of return: components or flavors?

Abstract

The most common evidence for inhibition of return (IOR) is the robust finding of increased response times to targets that appear at previously cued locations following a cue-target interval exceeding ~300 ms. In a variation on this paradigm, Abrams and Dobkin (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 20:467-477, 1994b) observed that IOR was greater when measured with a saccadic response to a peripheral target than with that to a central arrow, leading to the conclusion that saccadic responses to peripheral targets comprise motoric and perceptual components (the two-components theory for saccadic IOR), whereas saccadic responses to a central target comprise a single motoric component. In contrast, Taylor and Klein (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 26:1639-1656, 2000) discovered that IOR for saccadic responses was equivalent for central and peripheral targets, suggesting a single motoric effect under these conditions. Rooted in methodological differences between the studies, three possible explanations for this discrepancy can be found in the literature. Here, we demonstrate that the empirical discrepancy is rooted in the following methodological difference: Whereas Abrams and Dobkin (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 20:467-477, 1994b) administered central arrow and peripheral onset targets in separate blocks, Taylor and Klein (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 26:1639-1656, 2000) randomly intermixed these stimuli in a single block. Our results demonstrate that (1) blocking central arrow targets fosters a spatial attentional control setting that allows for the long-lasting IOR normally generated by irrelevant peripheral cues to be filtered and (2) repeated sensory stimulation has no direct effect on the magnitude of IOR measured by saccadic responses to targets presented about 1 s after a peripheral cue.