Inhibition of Return to Successively Stimulated Locations in a Sequential Visual Search Paradigm

The inhibition of return (IOR) effect refers to a slowing in response time for a target that appears at a previously attended location. Many investigators have speculated that IOR's inherent ecological validity may be to ensure an efficient search of a complex environment by creating a bias aga...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 1998-10, Vol.24 (5), p.1467-1475
Main Authors: Danziger, Shai, Kingstone, Alan, Snyder, Janice J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activity levels. Psychomotricity
Adult
Attention - physiology
Biological and medical sciences
Cues
Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology
Ecology
Experiments
Exploratory Behavior - physiology
Eyes & eyesight
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Inhibition (Psychology)
Latent Inhibition
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Perception
Perceptual Masking - physiology
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Response rates
Space life sciences
Space Perception - physiology
Spatial Frequency
Stimulus Duration
Time Factors
Vigilance. Attention. Sleep
Vision
Visual Search
Visual Stimulation
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Summary:The inhibition of return (IOR) effect refers to a slowing in response time for a target that appears at a previously attended location. Many investigators have speculated that IOR's inherent ecological validity may be to ensure an efficient search of a complex environment by creating a bias against returning to locations that have already been investigated. Unfortunately, this intriguing idea has lacked compelling empirical support. The current study addressed this issue. It was shown that in a novel visual search task, the IOR could dwell at a minimum of 3 spatially noncontiguous locations. These data suggest that IOR may serve as an important mechanism for facilitating visual search in complex environments, by inhibiting attention from returning to previously inspected locations.
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/0096-1523.24.5.1467