There's Little Return for Attentional Momentum

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2009-12, Vol.35 (6), p.1726-1737
• Main Authors: Snyder, Janice J, Schmidt, William C, Kingstone, Alan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activity levels. Psychomotricity; Attention; Attention - physiology; Attitudes; Biological and medical sciences; British Columbia (Okanagan); Cognition & reasoning; Cues; Dissociation; Experimental psychology; Experiments; Facilitation; Foreign Countries; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Information processing; Inhibition; Inhibition (Psychology); Perception; Perceptual Motor Coordination; Photic Stimulation; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; Reaction Time; Reaction Time - physiology; Reaction times; Response Inhibition; Undergraduate Students; Vigilance. Attention. Sleep; Vision; Visual Perception; Visual Perception - physiology; Visual Search
• ISSN: 0096-1523; 1939-1277
• DOI: 10.1037/a0016885

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a delay in response time (RT) to targets appearing at a previously cued location. The prevailing view is that IOR reflects visual-motor inhibition. The "attentional momentum" account rejects this idea, and instead proposes that IOR reflects an automatic shift of attention away from the cued location resulting in slower RTs to targets presented there and speeded RTs to targets opposite the cue (an opposite facilitation effect or OFE). The drawback of this account is that J. J. Snyder, W. C. Schmidt, and A. Kingstone (2001) showed that there are few data to support the OFE, and no evidence that the OFE accounts for the IOR effect. Despite this evidence, several recent studies have promoted attentional momentum as a valid explanation for the IOR effect. Reanalysis of these recent studies and new data reveal, again, that IOR routinely occurs in the absence of the OFE, and when the OFE does occur, the IOR effect need not be present. This double dissociation invalidates attentional momentum as an explanation for the IOR effect. Extant data support an inhibitory explanation of the IOR effect.