Abstract
Previous research has illustrated the contributions of a sensory component(s) in inhibition of return (IOR) through manipulations of lower-level sensory stimulus variables (e.g., Guenther & Brown, VSS 2007, VSS 2011; Guenther, Narang, Siddiqui, & Brown, VSS 2009 ). For example, greater IOR magnitudes have been reported to higher spatial frequency targets (Guenther & Brown, VSS 2007; Guenther et al, VSS 2009) and to targets with a ramped presentation (gradual on/off) (Guenther & Brown, VSS 2011). Importantly, these stimulus manipulations held their greatest influence on the reaction times to targets appearing at cued locations. Other research, using short stimulus-onset-asynchronies (SOAs) (e.g., 94-121 ms), has demonstrated transient attention increases spatial (e.g., Yeshurun & Carrasco, 1999) and decreases temporal (e.g., Yeshurun & Levy, 2003) resolution at cued locations. The present experiments tested whether changes in perceptual sensitivity could be observed with the longer timeframes typical of IOR experiments. Temporal and spatial sensitivity were measured at validly and invalidly cued locations in an IOR paradigm using a SOA of 600 ms. Experiment 1 measured the two-flash fusion threshold and found greater temporal resolution at validly cued locations. Experiment 2 measured gap resolution with briefly presented (70 ms) Landolt-square targets and found greater spatial resolution at validly cued locations. Different from experiments with short cue-to-target SOAs (e.g., Yeshurun & Carrasco, 1999; Yeshurun & Levy, 2003), both temporal and spatial resolution were greater at validly cued locations.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012