Abstract
AbstractWhen exogenously cued, attention reflexively reorients towards the cued position. After a brief dwelling time, attention is released and then persistently inhibited from returning to this position for up to three seconds, a phenomenon coined ’inhibition of return’ (IOR). This inhibitory interpretation has shaped our understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of the attentional spotlight after an exogenous visual cue for more than three decades. However, a recent theory refines this traditional view and predicts that attention rhythmically alternates between possible target locations at a theta frequency, implying occasional returns of attention to the cued position. Unfortunately, previous IOR studies have only probed performance at a few, temporally wide-spread cue-target onset asynchronies (CTOAs) rendering a comparison of these contradictory predictions impossible. We therefore used a temporally fine-grained adaptation of the Posner paradigm with 25 equally and densely spaced CTOAs, which yielded a robust IOR effect in the reaction time difference between valid and invalidly cued trials. We modelled the time course of this effect across CTOAs as a linear or exponential decay (traditional IOR model), sinusoidal rhythm (rhythmic model) and a combination of both (hybrid model). Model comparison by means of goodness-of-fit indices provided strong evidence in favor of traditional IOR models, and against theta-rhythmic attentional sampling contributing to IOR. This finding was supported by an FFT analysis, which also revealed no significant theta rhythm. We therefore conclude that the spatio-temporal dynamics of attention following an exogenous cue cannot be explained by rhythmic attentional sampling.
Funder
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Sensory Systems,Language and Linguistics,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Reference49 articles.
1. Akaike, H. (1973). Information theory and an extension of the maximum likelihood principle. In B. Petrov & F. Caski (Eds.), Budapest: Akademiai Kiado. pp. 267–281.
2. Benedetto, A., Burr, D. C., and Morrone, M. C. (2018). Perceptual oscillation of audiovisual time simultaneity. eNeuro, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0047-18.2018
3. Benedetto, A., & Morrone, M. C. (2017). Saccadic suppression is embedded within extended oscillatory modulation of sensitivity. J of Neuroscience, 37(13), 3661–3670. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2390-16.2016
4. Benedetto, A., & Morrone, M. C. (2019). Visual sensitivity and bias oscillate phase-locked to saccadic eye movements. J Vis, 19(14), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1167/19.14.15
5. Berlucchi, G. (2006). Inhibition of return: A phenomenon in search of a mechanism and a better name. Cogn Neuropsychology, 23(7), 1065–1074. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643290600588426