Abstract
It is well known that a sudden luminance change (cue) captures attention, and that stimuli appearing near the cue after short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) are responded to more quickly than stimuli that appear far away (Posner & Cohen, 1984). We have found the opposite pattern using a similar paradigm. In our task, responses are slower to targets that appear nearer to the cue. We hypothesize that our task forces subjects to inhibit processing of the cue (in order to avoid making an anticipatory response) and that this inhibition carries over to targets that appear near to the cue. We have shown that the putative inhibition is not mediated by apparent motion between the cue and the target. It also does not spread to the target from the cue via the intervening placeholders. Instead, we suggest that the angle between the cue and the target (as subtended at fixation) plays a determinant role in the magnitude of the hypothesized inhibition effect.