INHIBITION OF RETURN TO OBJECT-BASED AND ENVIRONMENT-BASED LOCATIONS

Inhibition of return (IOR) has been described in terms of two function al components. The location-based component is associated with descrip tions of spatially fixed, environmental locations; the object-based co mponent is associated with more abstract descriptions of spatially inv ariant objects. In the present study, we hypothesized that the locatio n-based component may also be associated with descriptions of spatiall y invariant objects because, like environment-based descriptions, obje ct-based descriptions have an intrinsic spatial structure. To test thi s hypothesis, we employed a computer-generated depiction of a brick th at rotated in depth between the presentations of cue and target. The r esults of four experiments showed that IOR accrued to locations that r emained fixed with respect to the brick as well as the environment, su ggesting that both object-based and environment-based descriptions can influence location-based IOR.