INHIBITION OF RETURN IN A DISCRIMINATION TASK

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a bias against returning visual a ttention to a location that has been recently attended. Although IOR h as been demonstrated in a wide range of detection tasks, it has not be en reliably shown in discrimination tasks. The results of the present experiment, in which eye movement responses and a cue-target procedure were used, indicate that IOR can exist in a discrimination task. More over, the results indicate that the amount of IOR in the discriminatio n task was approximately equal to that found in the detection task. Th e results suggest that IOR will be obtained in a discrimination task i f the prior allocation of attention does not yield any useful informat ion concerning the forthcoming discrimination judgment.