Object-substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a mask, such as four dots that surround a brief target item, onsets simultaneously with the target and offsets a short time after the target, rather than simultaneously with it. OSM is a reduction in accuracy of reporting the target with the temporally trailing mask, compared with the simultaneously…

In a location-selection task, the repetition of a prior distractor location as the target location would slow down the response. This effect is termed the location negative priming (NP) effect. Recently, it has been demonstrated that repetition of a prior target location as the current target location would also slow down response. Because such…

Attention operates to select both spatial locations and perceptual objects. However, the specific mechanism by which attention is oriented to objects is not well understood. We examined the means by which object structure constrains the distribution of spatial attention (i.e., a "grouped array"). Using a modified version of the Egly et…

Inhibition of return (IOR) occurs when a target is preceded by an irrelevant stimulus (cue) at the same location: Target detection is slowed, relative to uncued locations. In the present study, we used relatively complex displays to examine the effect of repetition of nonspatial attributes. For both color and shape, attribute repetition produced a…

Understanding how responses become prepotent is essential for understanding when inhibitory control is needed in everyday behaviour. We investigated prepotency in the grass-snow task--in which a child points to a green card when the experimenter says "snow" and a white card when the experimenter says "grass". Experiment 1 (n =…

Two lick suppression studies were conducted with water-deprived rats to investigate the influence of spatial similarity in cue interaction. Experiment 1 assessed the influence of similarity of the spatial origin of competing cues in a blocking procedure. Greater blocking was observed in the condition in which the auditory blocking cue and the…

In contextual cueing, the position of a target within a group of distractors is learned over repeated exposure to a display with reference to a few nearby items rather than to the global pattern created by the elements. The authors contrasted the role of global and local contexts for contextual cueing in naturalistic scenes. Experiment 1 showed…

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a mechanism that results in a performance disadvantage typically observed when targets are presented at a location once occupied by a cue. Although the time course of the phenomenon--from the cue to the target--has been well studied, the time course of the effect--from target to response--is unknown. In 2…

Backward inhibition is proposed as a process of lateral inhibition that operates during response selection in task switching, reducing interference caused by the most recently abandoned task set. The effect has been observed across a wide range of contexts but is eliminated by using spatial location to cue tasks (K. D. Arbuthnott & T. S. Woodward,…