Inhibition Of Return Effect Research Articles

Stimulus-Locked and Response-Locked ERP Correlates of Spatial Inhibition of Return (IOR) in Old Age

Behavioral research has shown that Inhibition of Return (IOR) is preserved in old age although at longer time intervals between cue and target, which has been interpreted as reflecting a later disengagement from the cue. A recent event-related potential (ERP) study attributed this age-related pattern to an enhanced processing of the cue. Previous ERP research in young samples indicates that target and response processing are also affected by IOR, which makes interesting to study the ERP correlates of IOR from cue presentation to response execution. In this regard, in the present study stimulus-locked (cue-locked and target-locked) and response-locked ERPs were explored in healthy young and older participants. The behavioral results indicated preserved IOR in the older participants. The cue-locked ERPs could suggest that the older participants processed the cue as a warning signal to prepare for the upcoming target stimulus. Under IOR, target-locked ERPs of both age groups showed lower N1 amplitudes suggesting a suppression/inhibition of cued targets. During the P3 rising period, in young subjects a negative shift (Nd effect) to cued targets was observed in the lower visual field (LVF), and a positive shift (Pd effect) in the upper visual field. However, in the older group the Nd effect was absent suggesting a reduction of attentional resolution in the LVF. The older group showed enhanced motor activation to prepare correct responses, although IOR effects on response-locked lateralized readiness potential LRP indicated reduced response preparation to cued targets in both age groups. In general, results suggest that the older adults inhibit or reduce the visual processing of targets appearing at cued locations, and the preparation to respond to them, but with the added cost of allocating more attentional resources onto the cue and of maintaining a more effortful processing during the sequence of stimuli within the trial.

When caused by an eye movement, inhibition of return's effect is post-perceptual: evidence from SAT functions

When caused by an eye movement, inhibition of return's effect is post-perceptual: evidence from SAT functions

The Influence of Perceptual Load on Inhibition of Return

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a slower response to a target which appears at a previously attended location. We investigated whether perceptual load effects onset time of IOR in detection tasks. The results showed that the onset time of IOR was complex in different level of perceptual load. IOR effect was significant when perceptual load was low at 350ms, but the facilitation effect was significant at 850ms and 1350ms when perceptual load was high. The results indicated the onset time of IOR was influenced by perceptual load, indicating that perceptual load hinder the spatiotemporal correspondence between the cue and target integration.

Inhibition of Return Affects Contrast Sensitivity

Inhibition of return (IOR)-a slow response to targets at recently attended locations, is believed to play an important role in guiding behaviour. In the attention literature it has been shown that attentional capture by an exogenous cue affects contrast sensitivity so that it alters the appearance of low-contrast stimuli. Despite a significant amount of work over the last quarter century on IOR, it is not yet clear whether IOR operates in the same way. In the current study we examined the effect of IOR on contrast sensitivity-a very early, low-level perceptual process. We found in both a detection task and an orientation discrimination task that lower contrast was needed to detect the stimulus (Experiment 1) and determine its orientation (Experiment 2) at the cued location than at the uncued location, at short cue-target delays, while higher contrast was needed at long delays-reflecting IOR. These results clearly demonstrate that IOR affects contrast sensitivity in a similar way as attentional capture does and suggest that IOR increases perceived contrast of an object in the uncued location.

Inhibition of Return Effect Reversed by Perceptual Load

Perceptual load theory was considered to resolve the conflict between early and late selection models. We investigated whether perceptual load work well using IOR paradigm. The results showed that IOR disappeared in different level of perceptual load. The results indicated the onset time of IOR was influenced by perceptual load, indicating that perceptual load hinder the spatiotemporal correspondence between the cue and target integration.

The effect of reward on orienting and reorienting in exogenous cuing

It is thought that reward-induced motivation influences perceptual, attentional, and cognitive control processes to facilitate behavioral performance. In this study, we investigated the effect of reward-induced motivation on exogenous attention orienting and inhibition of return (IOR). Attention was captured by peripheral onset cues that were nonpredictive for the target location. Participants performed a target discrimination task at short (170 ms) and long (960 ms) cue–target stimulus onset asynchronies. Reward-induced motivation was manipulated by exposing participants to low- and high-reward blocks. Typical cue facilitation effects on initial orienting were observed for both the low- and high-reward conditions. However, IOR was found only for the high-reward condition. This indicates that reward-induced motivation has a clear effect on reorienting and inhibitory processes following the initial capture of attention, but not on initial exogenous orienting that is considered to be exclusively automatic and stimulus-driven. We suggest that initial orienting is completely data-driven, not affected by top-down motivational processes, while reorienting and the accompanying IOR effect involve motivational top-down processes. To support this, we showed that reward-induced motivational processes and top-down control processes co-act in order to improve behavioral performance: High-reward-induced motivation caused an increase in top-down cognitive control, as signified by posterror slowing. Moreover, we show that personality trait propensity to reward-driven behavior (BAS-Drive scale) was related to reward-triggered behavioral changes in top-down reorienting, but not to changes in automatic orienting.

Driven to distraction? The effect of simulated red light running camera flashes on attention and oculomotor control

Do similar factors influence the allocation of attention in visually sparse and abstract laboratory paradigms and complex real-world scenes? To explore this question we conducted a series of experiments that examined whether the flash that accompanies a Red Light Running Camera (RLRC) can capture observers' attention away from important roadway changes. Inhibition of Return (IOR) and eye movement direction served as indices of the spatial allocation of attention. In two experiments, participants were slower to respond to the brake lights of a vehicle in a driving scene when an RLRC flash occurred nearby or were slower to initiate eye movements to brake light signals (IOR effects). In a third experiment, we found evidence that less prevalent RLRC flashes disrupted eye movement control. Results suggest that attention can be misdirected as a result of RLRC flashes and provide additional evidence that findings from simple laboratory paradigms can predict the allocation of attention in complex settings that are more familiar to observers.

Inhibition of return in fear of spiders: discrepant eye movement and reaction time data.

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a bias against returning the attention to a previously attended location. As a foraging facilitator it is thought to facilitate systematic visual search. With respect to neutral stimuli, this is generally thought to be adaptive, but when threatening stimuli appear in our environment, such a bias may be maladaptive. This experiment investigated the influence of phobia-related stimuli on the IOR effect using a discrimination task. A sample of 50 students (25 high, 25 low in spider fear) completed an IOR task including schematic representations of spiders or butterflies as targets. Eye movements were recorded and to assess discrimination among targets, participants indicated with button presses if targets were spiders or butterflies. Reaction time data did not reveal a significant IOR effect but a significant interaction of group and target; spider fearful participants were faster to respond to spider targets than to butterflies. Furthermore, eye-tracking data showed a robust IOR effect independent of stimulus category. These results offer a more comprehensive assessment of the motor and oculomotor factors involved in the IOR effect.

Vertical asymmetries and inhibition of return: Effects of spatial and non-spatial cueing on behavior and visual ERPs

The mechanisms underlying inhibition of return (IOR) are still under debate. Besides the probable implication of several processes in its generation, a reason for this uncertainty may be related to experimental factors affecting the presence, time course, and magnitude of IOR. Two of them may be related to the arrangement of the stimuli in the visual field that could cause possible interactions between IOR and response conflict effects (horizontal arrangements) or between IOR and perceptual asymmetries (vertical arrangement). The purpose of the present study was to explore location and color cueing effects with a vertical arrangement of stimuli, free of S–R compatibility effects. To examine this possibility, a cue-back task with stimuli in the vertical meridian was employed. Targets could randomly and equiprobably appear at cued or uncued locations, or with cued or uncued color. These cueing effects were analyzed on behavior and ERPs separately for upper and lower visual fields (UVF and LVF). Under location cueing, behavioral responses were slower (spatial IOR) in both hemifields. In the ERPs, N1 reductions were observed in both visual fields although with different modulations in their latency and scalp distribution. In the P3 rising beginning, posterior negative deflections in the LVF (Nd) and anterior positive deflections (Pd) in the UVF were observed. Under color cueing, P3 amplitude was reduced in the UVF accompanied by no behavioral effects. These results suggest that different patterns of brain activation can be obtained in upper and lower visual fields under spatial- and non-spatial cueing conditions.

On the role of eye movement monitoring and discouragement on inhibition of return in a go/no-go task

Inhibition of return (IOR) most often describes the finding of increased response times to cued as compared to uncued targets in the standard covert orienting paradigm. A perennial question in the IOR literature centers on whether the effect of IOR is on motoric/decision-making processes (output-based IOR), attentional/perceptual processes (input-based IOR), or both. Recent data converge on the idea that IOR is an output-based effect when eye movements are required or permitted whereas IOR is an input-based effect when eye movements are monitored and actively discouraged. The notion that the effects of IOR may be fundamentally different depending on the activation state of the oculomotor system has been challenged by several studies demonstrating that IOR exists as an output-, or output- plus input-based effect in simple keypress tasks not requiring oculomotor responses. Problematically, experiments in which keypress responses are required to visual events rarely use eye movement monitoring let alone the active discouragement of eye movement errors. Here, we return to an experimental method implemented by Ivanoff and Klein (2001) whose results demonstrated that IOR affected output-based processes when, ostensibly, only keypress responses occurred. Unlike Ivanoff and Klein, however, we assiduously monitor and discourage eye movements. We demonstrate that actively discouraging eye movements in keypress tasks changes the form of IOR from output- to input-based and, as such, we strongly encourage superior experimental control over or consideration of the contribution of eye movement activity in simple keypress tasks exploring IOR.

Inhibition of Return in Trait Anxieties Under Different Cues

Inhibition of return (IOR), as an important part of attention bias, was generally considered as an adaptive mechanism during human evolution. Previous studies on the peculiarities of anxiety individual’s attention mainly focused on the attention orientation and inhibition ability; the effects of the natures of the stimuli on post-orientation inhibition, and the relation between the anxiety individual’s features and attentional bias, are still unclear. In the present study, we will focus on the attention bias of the anxiety group, and try to figure out the possible reasons underlying IOR features by using the cue-target paradigm with different cues. Traits Anxiety Inventory was used to test the undergraduates before the experiment, and finally twenty-nine undergraduates with high trait anxiety and twenty-eight with low trait anxiety were chosen as participants. In two experiments, participants were instructed to perform a cue-target task as accurately and quickly as possible, which included two kinds of uninformative cues: neutral cognitive cues and emotional face cues. Experiment 1 suggested that participants of high anxiety reacted more slowly than that of low anxiety under the condition of neutral cognitive cues. Although IOR did not appear in this experiment. Experiment 2 indicated that IOR effect occurred under all SOA levels for both groups, and IOR magnitudes of the two groups were modulated by emotional cues. The two groups showed no significant difference on IOR effect under the condition of positive cues, while IOR effect of the high anxiety group turned out to be much smaller than that of the low anxiety group under the condition of negative cues. These experiments suggested that only under negative emotional circumstances, groups of different trait anxiety showed different IOR abilities, and particularly, high anxiety group’s IOR ability was impaired, which provided specific information on possible improvement of the anxiety symptoms.

Task dependent modulation of exogenous attention: Effects of target duration and intervening events

Inhibition of return (IOR) consists of slower reaction times in response to stimuli appearing at previously attended or inspected locations. The exact mechanisms underlying the effect have not yet been determined. In the present work, we manipulated two variables, target duration and intervening event (fixation cue between cue and target), through which we modulated the IOR effect as a function of task. When the target was presented until response, the presence of an intervening event made the cueing effect more negative in all tasks, although facilitation in the absence of an intervening event was only observed in discrimination and go-no-go tasks. When the target duration was 50ms, the effect of the intervening event on cueing was also only observed for the discrimination and go-no-go tasks. Target duration had no effect at all in the discrimination task. Possible mechanisms for these modulations (detection cost and spatial selection benefit, both of which are based on cue-target integration processes) are discussed.

Reduced habituation to angry faces: increased attentional capture as to override inhibition of return

The aim of this paper was to study whether real angry faces do capture attention to the extent of overcoming the inhibition of return (IOR) effect and whether the anxiety level of participants modulates this effect by stressing biases toward threatening stimuli. With this purpose, participants categorized the emotional valence of face targets in a standard spatial cueing procedure suitable to measure IOR. In Experiment 1, participants were selected according to their high vs. low-trait anxiety, whereas in Experiment 2 participants were induced a positive vs. anxiety mood state. The typical IOR effect was observed with neutral and happy face targets, which disappeared with angry face targets. Similar results were observed for all anxiety groups and in both experiments. The results indicate that IOR is overridden when the target is a biologically relevant angry face, as highly relevant targets should suffer less from habituation to attentional capture regardless of anxiety. We suggest that these data show that attentional capture is less likely to habituate for threatening information, so that no cost is measured in detecting new threatening information appearing at recently cued locations.

Foraging for Thought

Perceptual processing of a target stimulus may be inhibited if its location has just been cued, a phenomenon of spatial attention known as inhibition of return (IOR). In the research reported here, we demonstrated a striking effect, wherein items that have just been the focus of reflective attention (internal attention to an active representation) also are inhibited. Participants saw two items, followed by a cue to think back to (i.e., refresh, or direct reflective attention toward) one item, and then had to identify either the refreshed item, the unrefreshed item, or a novel item. Responses were significantly slower for refreshed items than for unrefreshed items, although refreshed items were better remembered on a later memory test. Control experiments in which we replaced the refresh event with a second presentation of one of the words did not show similar effects. These results suggest that reflective attention can produce an inhibition effect for attended items that may be analogous to IOR effects in perceptual attention.

Is “Inhibition of Return” due to the inhibition of the return of attention?

Inhibition of Return (IOR) is usually explained in terms of orienting-reorienting of attention, emphasizing an underlying mechanism that inhibits the return of attention to previously selected locations. Recent data challenge this explanation to the extent that the IOR effect is observed at the location where attention is oriented to, where no reorienting of attention is needed. To date, these studies have involved endogenous attentional selection of attention and thus indicate a dissociation between the voluntary attention of spatial attention and the IOR effect. The present work demonstrates a dissociation between the involuntary orienting of spatial attention and the IOR effect. We combined nonpredictive peripheral cues with nonpredictive central orienting cues (either arrows or gaze). The IOR effect was observed to operate independent of involuntary spatial orienting. These data speak against the "reorienting hypothesis" of IOR. We suggest an alternative explanation whereby the IOR effect reflects a cost in detecting a new event (the target) at the location where another event (a cue) was coded before.

The Gambler's Fallacy: A Basic Inhibitory Process?

Two studies were conducted to examine the relation between the gambler’s fallacy (GF) and attentional processes associated with inhibition of return (IOR). In Study 1, participants completed rapid aiming movements to equally probable targets presented to the left and right. They also completed a gambling protocol in which they bet on the illumination of either target. Consistent with the IOR phenomenon, participants were slower to initiate their movements on trial N + 1 when the target was the same as trial N. Participants with more pronounced IOR were more likely to switch betting behavior after a win than participants with a smaller index. This betting behavior was also related to a GF index measured by a questionnaire. In Study 2, participants performed both the aiming task and the betting task with a partner. Each participant performed two trials before ceding to the partner. Thus we were able to examine IOR and betting behavior as a function of the participant’s own previous trial and their partner’s previous trial. The IOR effect was robust both within and between-participants. Participants were more likely to maintain their bet following an unsuccessful outcome regardless of whether it was their own outcome or their partner’s outcome. This type of betting behavior is consistent with the GF. Individual IOR scores were a reliable predictor of betting behavior and the questionnaire was also successful in predicting behavior. In addition, the within-person IOR indices covaried with the GF index derived from the questionnaire. In summary, there appears to be a relation between IOR and the GF. We suggest that early humans developed specialized attentional systems to deal with non-random environmental contingencies, and that the automatic processes associated with these systems are sometimes maladaptive in artificial environments in which the same contingencies do not hold.

Implicit learning of spatiotemporal contingencies in spatial cueing.

We investigated the role of implicit spatiotemporal learning in the Posner spatial cueing of attention task. During initial training, the proportion of different trial types was altered to produce a complex pattern of spatiotemporal contingencies between cues and targets. For example, in the short invalid and long valid condition, targets reliably appeared either at an uncued location after a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 100 ms) or at a cued location after a long SOA (350 ms). As revealed by postexperiment questioning, most participants were unaware of these manipulations. Whereas prior studies have examined reaction times during training, the current study examined the long-term effect of training on subsequent testing that removed these contingencies. An initial experiment found training effects only for the long SOAs that typically produce inhibition of return (IOR) effects. For instance, after short invalid and long valid training, there was a benefit at long SOAs rather than an IOR effect. A 2nd experiment ruled out target-cue overlap as an explanation of the difference between learning for long versus short SOAs. Rather than a mix of perfectly predictable spatiotemporal contingencies, Experiment 3 used only short SOA trials during training with a probabilistic spatial contingency. There was a smaller but reliable training effect in subsequent testing. These results demonstrate that implicit learning for specific combinations of location and SOA can affect behavior in spatial cueing paradigms, which is a necessary result if more generally spatial cueing reflects learned spatiotemporal regularities.

Inhibition of return in the visual field: the eccentricity effect is independent of cortical magnification.

Inhibition of return (IOR) as an indicator of attentional control is characterized by an eccentricity effect, that is, the more peripheral visual field shows a stronger IOR magnitude relative to the perifoveal visual field. However, it could be argued that this eccentricity effect may not be an attention effect, but due to cortical magnification. To test this possibility, we examined this eccentricity effect in two conditions: the same-size condition in which identical stimuli were used at different eccentricities, and the size-scaling condition in which stimuli were scaled according to the cortical magnification factor (M-scaling), thus stimuli being larger at the more peripheral locations. The results showed that the magnitude of IOR was significantly stronger in the peripheral relative to the perifoveal visual field, and this eccentricity effect was independent of the manipulation of stimulus size (same-size or size-scaling). These results suggest a robust eccentricity effect of IOR which cannot be eliminated by M-scaling. Underlying neural mechanisms of the eccentricity effect of IOR are discussed with respect to both cortical and subcortical structures mediating attentional control in the perifoveal and peripheral visual field.

Inhibition of return at different eccentricities in the visual field share the same temporal window

Neurobiological and psychophysical evidence indicates a functional subdivision of the human visual field with a border at approximately 10–15° eccentricity. Recent support for this inhomogeneity comes from an attention study on inhibition of return (IOR), which shows a much stronger IOR effect in the periphery relative to the perifoveal visual field (Bao & Pöppel [1]). Is this inhomogeneity of the visual field also reflected in the temporal dynamics of IOR? To answer this question, we examined when IOR effects disappear at the two functional regions of the visual field. Consistent with previous observations, IOR is much stronger in the periphery relative to the perifoveal visual field, but the two decay functions reach threshold at approximately the same time. This observation suggests a common temporal control window for IOR in both perifoveal and peripheral visual fields.

Inhibition of Return Impairs Phosphene Detection

Efficient visual exploration requires the ability to select possible target locations via spatial attention and to deselect previously inspected locations via inhibition of return (IOR). Although a great deal is known about the effects of spatial attention on processing in visual cortex, much less is known about the effects of IOR on early visual areas. One possibility is that IOR acts in an opposite way to spatial attention, such that, whereas spatial attention enhances target related neural signals in visual cortex, IOR suppress target-related signals. Using a novel dual-coil TMS protocol, we found that IOR reduced the probability of detecting a TMS-induced phosphene in extrastriate cortex (V5). Specifically, a nonpredictive spatial precue presented 500 or 800 msec before stimulation significantly reduced the probability of detecting a phosphene when the precue appeared contralaterally to the site of stimulation (i.e., ipsilaterally to the potential location of the phosphene), compared with ipsilaterally or centrally presented cues. This result demonstrates that IOR facilitates visual exploration by directly affecting the strength of target-related signals in extrastriate visual cortex. This result is consistent with neurophysiological models of attention, which postulate that IOR modulates perception by biasing competition between sensory representations.