Inhibition of return in location- and identity-based choice decision tasks

Three experiments were conducted to determine whether inhibition of return can be best characterized as an attentional or a motor phenomenon. In the first experiment, subjects made choice key-press responses to the location of a target (left or right) or the identity of the target (X or +) by pressing a left or right response key. In the second experiment, the display was rotated 90 degrees so that there was no direct spatial mapping between the vertically aligned stimulus display and the horizontally aligned response keys. In both experiments, inhibition of return was observed for location-based and identity-based choice responses, although more inhibition was seen in the identity-based responses. The results of the third experiment suggested that this larger inhibitory effect may be specific to the covert orienting of reflexive attention in response to the sudden appearance of a single peripheral stimulus in the identity tasks. Overall, the results are consistent with the attentional, not the motor, explanation of inhibition of return.