The inhibition of return is independent of attentional orienting both within and between modalities.

Abstract

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a phenomenon that individuals respond more slowly when the target is presented in the previously cued location in a cue-target paradigm. Although there is a large amount of evidence to support the "reorienting hypothesis" of IOR, it is still continuously challenged in the visual single-modal domain. However, it is unclear whether the occurrence of IOR under cross-modality is consistent with the reorienting hypothesis. In the present study, we used a variant of the cue-target paradigm to investigate the effect of attentional orienting as modulated by the central reorienting cue on IOR within the visual modality (Experiment 1) and across auditory-visual modalities (Experiment 2). The results showed that IOR triggered by the peripheral cue and attentional orienting triggered by the central reorienting cue directionality occurred in both the visual single-modal condition and the auditory-visual cross-modal condition, but there was no interaction between them. These results indicated that attentional reorienting may not be the cause of IOR in either single-modal or cross-modal auditory-visual conditions.