Response Conflict and Inhibition of Return

Much research has suggested that attention is biased away from previously attended locations-- a phenomenon termed inhibition of return (IOR). Traditionally, IOR studies use simple visual stimuli in detection tasks and employ a cue-target paradigm where a task-irrelevant cue is briefly presented followed by a target at either a cued location (same location as cue) or at an uncued location. Participants provide no response to the cue, but then produce a key press response upon target detection. When the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) is less than 300 ms, response to the target is facilitated by the cue; when the SOA is greater than 300 ms, response to the target is slowed at the cued location. The current study investigates different cue-target tasks and their effect on inhibition of return (IOR). We will conduct a between-subjects experiment with three conditions differing in response instruction. Target-only condition replicates the classic IOR study using a cue-target, detection task paradigm in which participants respond to the target but not the cue. Same-response condition requires participants to make identical responses to the cue and target. Different-response condition requires participants to provide a response to both the cue and the target, but the responses for the cue and target will differ. Together these studies help us understand the extent that IOR is caused by a motor response conflict as we compare the magnitude of IOR from the three testing conditions.