Inhibition of Return and Learned Value

Abstract

Salient stimuli automatically attract attention, leading to facilitation effects, but later reduce the likelihood that attention will be recaptured at the same location or by the same object, a phenomenon known as inhibition of return (IOR). Interestingly, IOR is a modulable phenomenon in response to different manipulations of both cue and target. To date, few studies have investigated whether the arbitrary association of an irrelevant dimension (e.g., color) with different levels of reward can affect IOR. In two pre-registered studies, we manipulated the amount of reward associated with a target in a Posner-type task and examined whether such a manipulation affected the IOR effect in a phase in which the participant received feedback on his performance and in a phase in which feedback was omitted. Experiment 1 showed that learned value can modulate the IOR effect only when feedback is omitted. Experiment 2 nominally replicated the previous results, but not statistically. Suspecting a relatively small effect size, we analyzed both experiments together (total N = 100) observing a consistent reduction of the IOR effect for targets associated with high reward compared to those associated with low reward. A meta-analysis of the current and two other conceptually similar published studies further suggests that although value can modulate IOR, the effect size may be small, and a high sample size may be needed to research this topic. These results are discussed in light of recent theories of attentional orienting and return inhibition.