Abstract

Inhibition of return(IOR) refers to a bias against attending to and/or detecting visual stimuli at recently attended locations. Previous studies tried to find the underlying mechanisms in relation to the attention shift or eye movement. This study aimed to examine the relationship between IOR and the eye movement system. In experiment 1, the cue was manipulated so that subjects made a saccade to periphery and moved their eyes slowly to the center along the cue, moving from periphery toward the center. The task was to detect a target. There were no IOR-effect in the pursuit condition. In experiment 2, subjects made a pursuit eye movement along the cue, moving slowly from the center toward periphery and then made a saccade to the center. There were also no IOR-effects, if the saccade systems were not activated. These results suggest that the activation of saccade systems is a neccessary condition for IOR.