INHIBITION OF RETURN TO SUCCESSIVELY STIMULATED LOCATIONS IN A SEQUENTIAL VISUAL-SEARCH PARADIGM

The inhibition of return (IOR) effect refers to a slowing in response time for a target that appears at a previously attended location. Many investigators have speculated that IOR's inherent ecological validity may be to ensure an efficient search of a complex environment by crea ting a bias against returning to locations that have already been inve stigated. Unfortunately, this intriguing idea has lacked compelling em pirical support. The current study addressed this issue. It was shown that in a novel visual search task, the IOR could dwell at a minimum o f 3 spatially noncontiguous locations. These data suggest that IOR may serve as an important mechanism for facilitating visual search in com plex environments, by inhibiting attention from returning to previousl y inspected locations.