Abstract
Inhibition of return (IOR) is an inhibitory aftermath of orienting typically seen in the form of slower response to targets presented in the previously attended location. IOR has been shown to exist in two mutually exclusive forms (Taylor & Klein, 2000): an effect on motoric processes (an output form) is observed when the oculomotor system is not suppressed and an effect on attentional/perceptual processes (an input form) when the oculomotor system is suppressed. Whereas Chica, Taylor, Lupianez, and Klein (2010) discovered that when caused by an eye movement to an uninformative peripheral cue, the delay in responding to targets at the originally cued location (the IOR effect) was accompanied by more accurate responding (a speed-accuracy tradeoff). It is impossible to tell from their data pattern if this evidence for a criterion shift was or was not accompanied by a genuine improvement in information processing. We investigated the trading relation between speed and accuracy when IOR was caused by an eye movement to a spatially-uninformative cue by implementing five 210 ms response windows (beginning 120ms, 240ms, 360ms, 480ms, and 600ms after the target's appearance) within which observers were required to make a non-spatial discrimination about the target. By generating speed-accuracy tradeoff functions as proposed by Wickelgren (1977) and implemented by Ivanoff and Klein (2006), we determined the output form of IOR is characterized exclusively by a criterion shift, as represented by performance at both cued and uncued locations existing on a single speed-accuracy function.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014