Location cue validity affects inhibition of return of visual processing

Inhibition-of-return is the process by which visual search for an object po sitioned among others is biased toward novel rather than previously inspect ed items. It is thought to occur automatically and to increase search effic iency. We examined this phenomenon by studying the facilitative and inhibit ory effects of location cueing on target-detection response times in a sear ch task. The results indicated that facilitation was a reflexive consequenc e of cueing whereas inhibition appeared to depend on cue informativeness. M ore specifically, the inhibition-of-return effect occurred only when the cu e provided no information about the impending target's location. We suggest that the results are consistent with the notion of two levels of visual pr ocessing. The first involves rapid and reflexive operations that underlie t he facilitative effects of location cueing on target detection. The second involves a rapid but goal-driven inhibition procedure that the perceiver ca n invoke if doing so will enhance visual search performance. (C) 2000 Elsev ier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.