Effects of inhibition of return on voluntary and visually guided saccades.

Abstract

Four experiments examined the effects of inhibition of return on endogenously generated and visually guided saccades. In Experiments 1-3, subjects responded to a peripheral target by making either a prosaccade (toward the target) or an antisaccade (toward the field opposite the target). Prior to the appearance of the target, one of the two equiprobable target locations was activated by presenting a peripheral precue (Experiments 1 and 2), or by executing an endogenous saccade in response to a central precue (Experiment 3). In Experiment 1, the eyes remained fixed when the cue appeared; in Experiment 2 subjects made a saccade to the peripheral cue, and returned their eyes to the centre before the target appeared. In both experiments, saccade latencies were longer for targets appearing at the precued location for both prosaccade and antisaccade tasks. In Experiment 3, saccade latencies were longer for targets appearing at the precued location only in the prosaccade task; no effect of the precue was obtained in the antisaccade task. These results suggest that endogenously generated saccades activate both an inhibition of target detection and a motor alternation bias. Experiment 4 showed that inhibition of return generated by a peripheral precue increased the latency for a subsequent endogenous saccade (from a central, arrow target) toward the precued location. Inhibition of return may affect perceptual processing and also produce a motor alternation bias dependent upon whether it is activated exogenously or endogenously. Posner and Cohen (1984;Posner, Cohen, & Rafal, 1982) observed that when attention is summoned by a luminance change (brightening or dimming), the initial facilitation of detection at the stimulated location is succeeded, within a few hundred ms, by an inhibition of detection at the same location. This phenomenon, which they called inhibition of return, has since been demonstrated in numerous studies which have revealed much about its properties

Differential Influence of Attention on Gaze and Head Movements

“…At longer SOAs, we found the opposite pattern, where both head and saccade reaction times were longer for the congruent compared with the incongruent condition. This effect is known as inhibition of return (IOR) and is commonly measured as the relative difference between congruent and incongruent conditions (Abrams and Dobkin 1994a,b;Klein 2000;Maylor and Hockey 1985;Posner and Cohen 1984;Posner et al 1985;Rafal et al 1994;ReuterLorenz et al 1996;Tanaka and Shimojo 1996;Taylor and Klein 1998).…”

Peripheral stimuli generate different forms of inhibition of return when participants make prosaccades versus antisaccades to them

“…The empirical basis of our belief comes from studies in which observers are required to generate antisaccades. These studies almost exclusively show that the inhibitory effect can only be measured when the cue and target are presented in the same location (Rafal, Egly, & Rhodes, 1994;Fecteau, Au, Armstrong, & Munoz, 2004). The theoretical basis lies in the proposal (e.g., Forbes & Klein, 1996) that observers must inhibit the reflexive oculomotor system in order to behave according to instructions in the antisaccade task, a proposal for which there is support at the single unit level (see Everling, Dorris, Klein, &Munoz, 1999 andIgnashchenkova, Dicke, Haarmeier, &Thier, 2004).…”

“…When overt orienting is required, subsequent responding is biased against the location of the cue. As such, repeat stimulation of an input pathway is not required to observe the effect (see also Posner et al, 1985) which can be measured with stimuli in central vision requiring responses compatible with the location of the peripheral cue (Taylor & Klein, 2000;Rafal, Egly, & Rhodes, 1994). This effect is commonly referred to as motoric/decisional (Taylor & Klein, 2000), or as occurring nearer the output end of the processing continuum (Hilchey, Klein, & Ivanoff, 2012).…”

Inhibitory processes in auditory selective attention: Evidence of location-based and frequency-based inhibition of return

“…For example, Tipper et al (1991) demonstrated that lOR can become associated with an object and may, in fact, move in accordance with its trajectory to a new location, apparently indicating the existence of separate "what" and "where" inhibitory mechanisms (see also Tipper et al, 1994). Rafal, Egly, and Rhodes (1994) proposed that these two components might operate independently; location-based lOR might act to create a motor bias against returning the eyes to a previously attended location, while objectbased lOR might act to reduce sensitivity to the object with which it is associated.…”