Inhibition of return: A graphical meta-analysis of its time course and an empirical test of its temporal and spatial properties

Immediately after a stimulus appears in the visual field, there is often a short period of facilitated processing of stimuli at or near this location. This period is followed by one in which processing is impaired, rather than facilitated. This impairment has been termed inhibition of return (IOR). In the present study, the time course of this phenomenon was examined in two ways. (1) A graphical meta-analysis plotted the size of the effect as a function of the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of the two stimuli. This analysis showed that IOR is impressively stable for SOAs of 300-1,600 msec. It also showed that the literature does not provide any clear sense of the duration of IOR. (2) An empirical approach was, therefore, taken to fill this gap in our knowledge of IOR. In three experiments, IOR was tested using SOAs between 600 and 4,200 msec. IOR was robust for approximately 3 see and appeared to taper off after this point; the observed duration varied somewhat as a function of the testing conditions. In addition, for the first second, the degree of inhibition was inversely related to distance of the target from the original stimulus, but for the next 2 see this spatial distribution was not observed. Theories of the mechanisms and function of IOR must conform to these spatial and temporal properties.