INHIBITION OF RETURN PRODUCED BY COVERT SHIFTS OF VISUAL-ATTENTION IN 6-MONTH-OLD INFANTS

Posner and Cohen (1984) demonstrated that if attention is oriented to a peripheral spatial location by a visual cue and returns to a central fixation point, processing of subsequent visual stimuli at that location is inhibited relative to the contralateral position. To examine this phenomenon in infants, 25 six-month-olds were tested on a saccadic refixation task designed to produce covert shifts of attention. While fixating a central target, a peripheral cue was presented for 180 ms, followed immediately by the onset of a similar target at either the same or opposite location. Inhibition of return was demonstrated in that saccadic latencies to targets appearing at the same peripheral location were longer than latencies to targets appearing at the contralateral position even though no eye movement had been made to the cue.