PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Research Article
INHIBITION OF RETURN IS A FORAGING FACILITATOR
IN VISUAL SEARCH
Raymond M. Klein and W. Joseph MacInnes
Department of Psychology and Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
AbstractUsing overt orienting, participants searched a complex
visual scene for a camouflaged target (Waldo from the Wheres
Waldo? books). After several saccades, we presented an uncamouflaged probe (black disk) while removing or maintaining the scene,
and participants were required to locate this probe by foveating it.
Inhibition of return was observed as a relative increase in the time
required to locate these probes when they were in the general region of
a previous fixation, but only when the search array remained present.
Perhaps also reflecting inhibition of return, preprobe saccades showed
a strong directional bias away from a previously fixated region.
Together with recent studies that replicate the finding of inhibition at
distractor locations following serial but not parallel visual searchso
long as the search array remains visiblethese data strongly support
the proposal that inhibition of return functions to facilitate visual
search by inhibiting orienting to previously examined locations.
Immediately following a peripheral stimulus (cue), there is often a
short-lived increase in processing efficiency for nearby stimuli. This
phasic improvement has been attributed to automatic (exogenous) orienting of attention toward the cue (see Klein, Kingstone, & Pontefract,
1992; Posner, 1980). In the absence of motivation to maintain attention at the cued location, this early facilitation is followed (or accompanied) by a longer lasting inhibition (Posner & Cohen, 1984) that has
been called inhibition of return (IOR; see Taylor & Klein, 1998b, for
a review).1 Extending Posner and Cohens (1984) interpretation of
IOR as an inhibitory mechanism that would encourage the sampling of
new information in the visual field, Klein (1988) proposed that IOR
might facilitate visual search when each display item requires an attention-demanding inspection to determine if it is the target (cf. Treisman
& Gelade, 1980). Inhibitory tagging of display items that have already
been examined attentively would, by repelling attention, help the
observer avoid reinspecting them.
Klein (1988) tested this functional explanation of IOR by presenting luminance-detection probes immediately after the subject had performed an easy (preattentive; target pops out) or difficult (requiring
serial allocation of attention to array items) visual search (see Fig. 1).
The probes occurred on half of the trials and were presented at locations where there had been an item in the search display (on probes)
or at locations where no item had been presented (off probes). The
rationale was straightforward: In serial search if the presumed allocation of attention to each item is followed by inhibition of return, then
detection of on-probes should be delayed compared with off-probes
(Klein, 1988, p. 430). This is precisely what Klein (1988) found using

Address correspondence to Raymond Klein, Department of Psychology,

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4J1, Canada; e-mail:
ray.klein@dal.ca.
1. We use the term IOR (which we think has been overextended recently in
the literature on cognitive inhibition) to refer to inhibition generated by and
measured in spatial behavior.

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Copyright 1999 American Psychological Society

parallel search to control for other factors, such as masking and

expectancies (see Table 1). This previous study thus provides support
for an intuitively appealing view of IOR as a foraging facilitator.

IOR AS A FORAGING FACILITATOR:

CHALLENGES AND REBUTTALS
Although several challenges to the functional interpretation of IOR
as a foraging facilitator materialized in the years following Kleins
(1988) article, more recent findings rebut these challenges.
First, evidence began to accumulate that it might not be attention
that was inhibited but rather processes more closely related to
responding. Initial attempts to obtain IOR using nonspatial discrimination tasks were unsuccessful (Kwak & Egeth, 1992; Pontefract &
Klein, 1988, described in Klein & Taylor, 1994; Tanaka & Shimojo,
1996; Terry, Valdes, & Neill, 1994). Because performance on such
tasks is sensitive to the locus of attention, the fact that IOR did not
influence such tasks challenged the assumption that attention is inhibited in IOR. Indeed, on the basis of this finding and the fact that IOR
does not affect the perceived temporal order of stimuli (Maylor, 1985;
see Klein, Schmidt, & Mller, 1998, for a review), Klein and Taylor
(1994) proposed (see also Schmidt, 1996a, 1996b, and Tanaka & Shimojo, 1996, for similar proposals) that it was not attention that was
inhibited in IOR but rather responding toward stimuli appearing at
locations for which there had previously been an oculomotor program
(cf. Rafal, Calabresi, Brennan, & Sciolto, 1989). If correct, this proposal would undermine the functional interpretation of IOR as a foraging facilitator, which is predicated on the inhibition of attention.
However, in numerous laboratories, IOR has recently been observed to
have an impact on nonspatial discrimination tasks. For example, using
a short (100-ms) cue-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) with a
variety of longer ones, Lupiez, Miln, Tornay, Madrid, and Tudela
(1997) found IOR with both simple detection and color discrimination
tasks (though with the discrimination task, IOR appeared at longer
SOAs than with the detection task). In addition, Pratt, Kingstone, and
Khoe (1997) have found evidence for IOR in a form discrimination
task (see also Cheal, Chastain, & Lyon, 1998), and Handy, Jha, and
Mangun (1999) have demonstrated a d' effect using a go/no-go size
discrimination task. Whatever the cause of the discrepancy,2 the fact
2. More than one cause is likely responsible. Although a time-course difference works well for resolving the discrepancy between Lupiez et al. (1997) and
Pontefract and Klein (1988), both of whom used a cue-target paradigm, a different explanation is needed for the dissociation (IOR with detection and localization, but not with color or form discrimination) reported by Tanaka and Shimojo
(1996), who used a target-target paradigm with relatively long intertrial intervals.
In this case, IOR from the preceding target may be masked by a response-repetition heuristic (cf. Keele, 1973, pp. 9193). Compared with a simple detection
task, in a complex discrimination task, there will be greater utility for the subject
to bypass the response selection stage by just repeating the previous response
when the subject notices that a similar target has appeared on successive trials.
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Raymond M. Klein and W. Joseph MacInnes

Takeda & Yagi, in press).3 Takeda and Yagi conducted a close replication of Klein (1988). Their data are shown in Table 1, along with
Mller and von Mhlenens remarkably similar pattern. The demonstration (Abrams & Dobkin, 1994; Tipper, Driver, & Weaver, 1991;
Tipper, Weaver, Jerreat, & Burak, 1994) that IOR may be tagged to
objects (rather than, or in addition to, environmental locations) provides a theoretical rationale for the importance of maintaining the display elements in order to observe IOR after a visual search task: If,
during visual search, IOR tags objects in the scene once they have
been inspected, then when the scene is removed (and the objects,
therefore, disappear), the inhibition should likewise be removed.
Indeed, Tipper, who has been a consistent adherent of the view that
IOR functions to facilitate visual search, has made precisely this suggestion (Tipper et al., 1994, pp. 495496).

DOES INHIBITION OF RETURN GUIDE NATURAL

VISUAL SEARCH?

Fig. 1. Hypothesized distribution of inhibition of return in visual

search. Filled circles in the top rectangle indicate the locations of display items in a search task on a target-absent trial. The middle rectangles illustrate that following a difficult search task (serial), inhibitory
tags are left behind at each distractor location visited by attention; in
contrast, inhibition is not left behind at distractor locations following
an easy (parallel) search task. Probes presented in new locations
(Off) and locations previously occupied by distractors (On) are
illustrated in the bottom rectangles. (Redrawn from Klein, 1988.)

that IOR can be obtained with nonspatial discriminations reopens the

possibility that attention is inhibited from returning to previously
inspected locations (see Taylor & Klein, 1998a).
A second challenge came from studies suggesting that IOR could
be maintained at only one locationthe one most recently stimulated.
Pratt and Abrams (1995) presented a cue at either one or, in succession, both possible target locations before presenting a target. In the
two-cue condition, they found inhibition only at the most recently
cued location. Gibson and Egeth (1994) explained this result and
applied it to their own findings by proposing that IOR generated by a
cue was canceled by presentation of a subsequent stimulus at a taskrelevant location, a mechanism they called disinhibition of return.
Although Pratt and Abrams (1995; Abrams & Pratt, 1996) observed
IOR only at the most recently cued location or region, Tipper, Weaver,
and Watson (1996) disputed this finding, and more recently, Kingstone
and his colleagues (Danziger, Kingstone, & Snyder, 1998; Snyder &
Kingstone, in press) provided compelling evidence for IOR at more
than one location. Similarly, Klein et al. (1998) showed that disinhibition of return is an unlikely mechanism that is not needed to explain
Gibson and Egeths (1994) pattern of results.
Finally, failures to replicate the original finding of IOR following
serial visual search (Wolfe & Pokorny, 1990; see also Klein & Taylor,
1994) provided a direct challenge to the functional interpretation of
IOR. Recently, the pattern reported by Klein (1988) was replicated in
two different laboratories, but only when the search array remained
visible when the probe was delivered (Mller & von Mhlenen, 1999;
VOL. 10, NO. 4, JULY 1999

Our purpose in conducting the present study was twofold: (a) to

determine whether IOR would be observed in the behavior of the oculomotor system when an observer was searching a complex scene for
a camouflaged target and (b) to replicate and extend the finding that
the maintenance of IOR depends on the persistence of the scene being
searched. To accomplish these goals, we presented observers with pictures taken from the Wheres Waldo?TM series of picture books,
wherein Waldo (a curly-haired man with a walking stick, red-andwhite striped shirt, and blue slacks) is hidden in a variety of dense and
colorful environments. A long-robed, white-haired wizard is an alternate or additional target in some of the pictures. We presented each
picture superimposed on a central fixation disk whose removal signaled the participants to look for Waldo until they detected a probe
stimulus (reappearance of the disk in a new location), at which time
they were to reacquire it. We placed this probe carefully on the picture
after several saccades had been made; when the probe appeared, the
picture either was simultaneously removed or continued to be displayed. The probe was placed on an equi-eccentric circle around the
current fixation such that one of the possible probe locations was the
immediately preceding fixation location (one-back; Experiment 1) or
the fixation immediately preceding that one (two-back; Experiment 2),
and the remaining locations varied in angular separation from this
location (see Figs. 2 and 3). We expected that if IOR were present, saccadic reaction times (SRTs) would increase the closer the probe was to
a previous fixation. If IOR were coded in relation to the scene (rather
than space per se), then maintenance of IOR would depend on maintenance of the scene (IOR would not be observed when the scene was
removed).

3. Klein (1988) found evidence of inhibitory tagging in visual search even

though (as in Wolfe & Pokorny, 1990, and his own later studies) the search
array in this study was removed prior to presentation of the luminance probe.
That maintenance of the search array is necessary to observe IOR following
search suggests (Mller & von Mhlenen, 1999) a possible explanation for this
discrepancy: In Kleins initial experiments (1988), conditions may have been
optimal for visible persistence of the search scene (high-luminance setting on
a Tektronix 604 oscilloscope with p31 phosphor in a dark room) after the
search array was turned off.

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Inhibition of Return Facilitates Foraging

Table 1. Difference in probe reaction time (in milliseconds) between targets presented at locations
occupied by distractors and targets presented at new locations following serial and parallel search in
recent studies

Study

Serial

Klein (1988, Experiment 1)

Klein (1988, Experiment 2)

39
62
Display maintained
Takeda and Yagi (in press, Experiment 2)
63
Takeda and Yagi (in press, Experiment 3)
68
Mller and von Mhlenen (1999, Experiment 2)
108
Display removed
Takeda and Yagi (in press, Experiment 1)
54
Mller and von Mhlenen (1999, Experiment 1)
42

Search
Parallel

Inferred
inhibition of return

7
16

32
46

36
35
71

27
33
37

49
39

5
3

Note. The data are from target-absent trials and are collapsed across set size (see Klein, 1988, for a justification).

A general goal of the project was to bring a degree of ecological

validity into the IOR literature. Of course, the Wheres Waldo? pictures and task are no more natural than driving a car or conducting a
search on the World Wide Web. However, because they are much more
complex and interesting than the displays and tasks typically used in
studies of attention, they provide an excellent environment for exploring natural search behavior. Finally, besides generating reaction times
to probe stimuli delivered by the experimenter, our method also provides a rich source of information on oculomotor behavior during the
search task itself.

METHOD
Participants
Eight adult volunteers, including one of the authors (W.J.M.), participated in Experiment 1; 6 new adult volunteers participated in
Experiment 2. All were either students or employees of Dalhousie
University.

Stimuli and Apparatus

Stimuli were eight scenes scanned from three Wheres Waldo?TM
books4 and modified for our requirements. We chose pictures in which
there was a relatively high density of distracting information, in which
there was no black and very little dark gray, and in which Waldo, when
present (in half the pictures), and the potential distractors were relatively small. The fixation and probe stimuli were black circles that
subtended 0.5 of visual angle and had transparent centers 0.1 in
diameter. Stimuli were presented on a 17-in., SVGA, ViewSonic mon-

4. The displayed scenes were excerpted from three books by Martin Handford (Grolier Ltd., London). From Wheres Waldo? (1987), we used the Beach,
the Museum, the Department Store (with Waldo), and the Fair; from Find Waldo
Now (1988), we used Once Upon a Saturday Morning (with Waldo) and The
Last Days of the Aztecs (with Waldo); and from The Giant Waldo Search
(1989), we used The Great Ball Game Players (with Waldo) and the Deep Sea
Divers. Additional information about the scenes is available from the authors.

348

itor (640 480 pixels, 256 colors) in an area measuring 25.0 (width)
19.4 (height) at a viewing distance of 71 cm. Scenes were drawn or
modified in a single screen refresh.
An EyeLinkTM video-based eye-tracking system was used to monitor each participants direction of gaze every 4 ms with a resolution of
0.1 or better. With this system, information about changes in direction
of gaze was available to the experimental program within approximately 20 ms.

Design and Procedure

Each experiment consisted of a block of 288 trials in which each of
the eight Waldo pictures was used equally often. The sequence of
events in a typical trial is shown in Figure 2. Each trial began when the
subject pressed the space bar to indicate that he or she was looking at
the fixation circle at the center of the screen. If fixation was stable, a
picture was displayed. The fixation stimulus remained present for an
additional 700 ms, and participants were instructed to maintain fixation until it disappeared and then to begin searching. Participants were
told to search for the wizard if they found Waldo in a particular picture. Examples of Waldo and the wizard were shown to subjects who
were not already familiar with them. Waldo was present in half the pictures, and the wizard in none, so that participants would continue
searching pictures that had become familiar. Participants were
informed that on most trials, after a random period, the fixation disk
would be presented somewhere on the screen, and that when it reappeared they should stop searching and shift their gaze to it as quickly
as possible. On half the trials, at the time of this probe presentation,
the search picture remained present until the probe was fixated; on the
remaining half of the trials, the picture was removed, leaving only the
probe present on a gray screen.
Any saccades or drifts (of more than 1) that occurred before the
removal of the fixation dot resulted in a warning beep and recycling of
the trial. Once the fixation dot was removed, subjects were free to
search the picture as they saw fit. After a variable number of saccades
(minimum of 4), the probe was presented (approximately 20 ms after
saccade termination) at a location determined by the current and previous fixation positions according to the following procedures (illustrated in Fig. 3a). In Experiment 1 (one-back condition), the current
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Raymond M. Klein and W. Joseph MacInnes

-60

Saccade Path

0
-120
60
180
120
Potential Probe Locations
in Experiment 1 (one back)

Gaze Position at
time of probe

B
1-back
2-back

Fig. 2. Sequence of displays in the experiments. The participants indicated when they were ready while fixating the disk at the center of a
blank display (a). The search array (shown here as a brick-wall pattern; see the text for a description) was then added (b). Removal of the
fixation disk was the signal to begin the search (c). After four or more
saccades (d), a probe stimulus (reappearance of the fixation disk) was
presented on an imaginary circle that was centered about the present
fixation and had a radius equal to the distance between the current and
penultimate (Experiment 1) or antepenultimate (Experiment 2) fixations. When the probe appeared, the search array either remained or
was removed (e). See the text and Figure 3 for further details.
gaze position became the center of an imaginary circle with a radius
equal to the distance between the current and penultimate (immediately preceding) fixation. Possible probe locations were centered on
the circumference of this circle, appearing equally often at the following six angles relative to the previous fixation location: 0, 60, 120,
180, 240, and 300. Probe presentation was delayed if the calculated radius was less than 1 or would place any one of the possible
probes off the screen. If no suitable gaze position could be found within 12 saccades, the trial was terminated without a warning beep. In
Experiment 2 (two-back condition), probe locations were determined
in the same manner except that the radius was based on the antepenultimate fixation (i.e., preceding the one used in Experiment 1; see
Fig. 3a).
A saccade was said to acquire the probe if the landing coordinates
of the saccade were within 1 of the probes center. All other fixation
locations were classified as misses. The primary dependent variable
was the SRT to acquire the probe when it was acquired within one saccade.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

1
2

3-back
3

Fig. 3. Placement of probes (a) and method of analyzing the direction

of freely executed saccades as a function of the angular difference
between a saccade and preceding fixation locations (b). In (a), the last
three saccades prior to probe presentation are shown. The empty circle shows the location of gaze at the time of probe presentation, and
the solid circles show the six possible locations for the probe target in
Experiment 1. Only one probe location was selected for each trial.
Each of these six locations was used equally often, but for purposes of
analysis, the locations were collapsed on the basis of the absolute difference in direction between the probe target and the penultimate fixation location (marked 0). The checkerboard-filled circle marks the
location of the antepenultimate fixation that was used to generate the
probe locations in Experiment 2. In (b), four saccades preceding the
delivery of the probe target are shown, along with the angular difference between the last saccade in this sequence and each of the three
preceding fixations.
(5.6%, Experiment 1; 20.4%, Experiment 2). Across the remaining trials, probes were acquired in one saccade more frequently when the
scene was removed (63.1%) than when it remained present (44.6%),
F(1, 12) = 69.6, p < .001, a difference likely due to increased salience
of probes that were not superimposed on a complex scene. The reaction times of these saccades provided the primary data for testing the
hypotheses.
Mean SRT for trials on which the probe was acquired in the first
saccade (see Fig. 4) were subjected to a 2 (one- vs. two-back) 2
(scene removed vs. maintained) 4 (angular distance5 from the previous fixation) mixed analysis of variance. There was a significant main

Probe Acquisition
Trials were excluded from this analysis if there was a blink (4.1%,
Experiment 1; 11.9%, Experiment 2) or a probe could not be delivered
VOL. 10, NO. 4, JULY 1999

5. For present purposes, the six different angles were collapsed into four
angular distances: 0, 60, 120, and 180 (as shown in Fig. 3a).

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Inhibition of Return Facilitates Foraging

have caused a refractory period for the programming of subsequent
saccades, until clearing and resetting of the visual-motor representations was completed. The results strongly favor this possibility: Saccades that were made immediately after probe presentation but were
not directed to the probe showed the same cost (46.4 ms) of scene
removal as did saccades that immediately acquired the probe.
The main effect of angular distance was significant, F(3, 36) =
8.03, p < .001, as was the predicted interaction between angular distance and scene removal, F(3, 36) = 8.15, p < .001. This pattern was
further qualified by a three-way interaction involving experiment, F(3,
36) = 3.299, p < .05. To determine whether the results supported the
predictions outlined earlier, we analyzed the two conditions (scene
removed and scene maintained) separately for the presence of IOR.
There were no significant effects or interactions (all Fs < 1) when
the scene was removed: The time to find the target was unaffected by
its angular distance from the immediately preceding fixation (oneback) or the fixation before that one (two-back). In contrast, when the
scene was maintained, the effect of angular distance was significant,
F(3, 36) = 16.24, p < .001, as was the interaction with experiment, F(3,
36) = 3.12, p < .05.
We expected that when the scene was maintained, the slowest
SRTs would be to probes presented in the same location as a previous
fixation (0), and that there would be a monotonic decrease in SRT
with increasing angular distance from this location. Precisely this pattern was observed in the two-back condition; in the one-back condition, the pattern was similar except that SRTs to targets presented at
the immediately prior fixation (0) were faster than expected. The twoback data (which were collected to help address this unexpected finding) suggest that one or more processes were operating in the one-back
condition to mask the inhibitory effect in the 0 location. The most
recently encoded region of the scene is likely to be the most accurately represented, so changes (e.g., probe presentation) in this region may
be more conspicuous than other changes. Alternatively, facilitation,
akin to that elicited in a peripheral cuing paradigm, might mask the
inhibition in this region. Although there are reasons to favor the conspicuity account,6 whatever the explanation, the important point is that
in the two-back condition, when both processes would be less likely to
be operating, the data pattern obtained was precisely the pattern predicted by the proposal that IOR was operating in this task.
Fig. 4. Saccadic reaction time when the first posttarget saccade
acquired the probe target. Results are shown separately for Experiment
1 (a), with probes at the one-back location, and Experiment 2 (b), with
probes at the two-back location. Within-subjects 95% confidence
intervals, appropriate for comparing different angular distances from
the same curve, were generated according to Loftus and Masson
(1994) using the Distance Subject MSEs from analyses of variance
done separately for the scene-maintained and scene-removed conditions of each experiment.
effect of scene removal, F(1, 12) = 28.5, p < .001, reflecting longer
SRTs when the scene was removed (257.7 ms) than when it remained
present (209.9 ms) during probe presentation. Sensory or motor mechanisms could be responsible for this difference. As an example of the
former, the global transient associated with removal of the scene might
have masked the local transient associated with the onset of the probe
(as occurs in change blindness; see Simons & Levin, 1997, p. 263),
thus delaying its perception. Alternatively, removing the visual data
used to compute oculomotor parameters for the Waldo search might

350

Saccades Prior to Probe Presentation

If IOR is elicited following each fixation, then the freely generated saccades made by our participants prior to the appearance of the
probe should show evidence of this inhibition. We explored this possi-

6. First, the viability of the facilitation account depends on the spread of

inhibition exceeding the spread of facilitation, a relation that has not yet been
demonstrated. Second, if facilitation were operating, we ought to have seen evidence of it in the scene-removed condition. Finally, we split SRTs to probe targets (in the scene-maintained condition) in the one-back study on the basis of
the preceding fixation duration. The analysis supports the conspicuity account
in that following longer-than-average fixations (which permit more encoding),
there was a 20-ms advantage for targets at the location of preceding fixation
compared with targets 60 from this location; this advantage was not present
following shorter-than-average fixations. This is not what would be expected
from a facilitation account, because if facilitation is initiated when a location is
fixated, and begins to decay from this point, then measured IOR should be larger following longer-than-average fixation durations.
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Raymond M. Klein and W. Joseph MacInnes

bility by examining the angle between a preprobe saccades vector and
the vector connecting the launching point for that saccade with the
previous fixation for all preprobe saccades that would have allowed
the delivery of a probe (see Method section). The relative angles were
first sorted into six equal pie-shaped regions, with one centered on the
vector from the preceding fixation (0) and the remaining five going
around an imaginary circle (as in Fig. 3a), and the six regions were
then collapsed as in the SRT analysis (see footnote 5). This process
was repeated (see Fig. 3b) using the fixation before the immediately
preceding fixation (two-back) and the fixation before that one (threeback). As can be seen in Figure 5, there was a very strong tendency for
saccades made during search to be launched in directions away from
previous landing positions. The proportion of saccades whose direction would shift gaze in the direction of previous fixations was relatively low, and there was, in each case, a significant effect of angular
distance in the form of a monotonic gradientone-back: F(3, 36) =
41.1, p < .001; two-back: F(3, 36) = 25.2, p < .001; three-back: F(3,
36) = 13.18, p < .001.
Although it is theoretically appealing to assert that IOR causes this
directional bias in oculomotor search, it is also possible that the oculomotor bias causes IOR. Because oculomotor responses are likely
initiated by a winner-take-all algorithm mediated by lateral inhibition
(and implemented in the superior colliculus), any asymmetric preparation would result in inhibition of the least-prepared saccades.
Although we believe that both behavioral and neurophysiological
studies may be able to distinguish between these alternatives,7 for present purposes we need not be disturbed by the cause-effect ambiguity,
because either way the visual system is keeping track of regions of the
scene that need not be reexamined.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

There are three main findings from this study of oculomotor
behavior during search of complex scenes. First and foremost, when
probe targets were presented in a scene during search, participants
were slower to find (saccade to) them when they were in the general region of preceding fixations than when they were in a new
region. This finding is precisely what is predicted by the proposal
that the function of IOR is to facilitate foraging (Klein, 1988; Posner & Cohen, 1984; Tipper et al., 1994). Moreover, the monotonic
function relating SRT to angular distance (particularly in Experiment
2) is consistent with the idea that there is a gradient of inhibition
around a previously attended (Maylor & Hockey, 1985) or fixated
region.
Second, this inhibition was not observed if the search array was
removed when the probe was delivered. This finding is consistent with
evidence showing that IOR is attached to objects in a scene (e.g.,
Abrams & Dobkin, 1994; Tipper et al., 1991, 1994) and also replicates
and extends recent demonstrations (Mller & von Mhlenen, 1999,
Experiments 1 and 2; Takeda & Yagi, in press) that IOR measured in

7. A behavioral approach we are pursuing using the same Wheres

Waldo? materials is to instruct the observer to look for something interesting
and remain fixated on it until a probe is detected or the trial ends. Under such
conditions, voluntary oculomotor preparation would be unwarranted, so if
probes delivered near previous fixations are inhibited, it would be reasonable
to assume that IOR precedes, and possibly causes, the asymmetric motor preparation observed here.
VOL. 10, NO. 4, JULY 1999

Fig. 5. Percentage of freely executed (saccadic) eye movements made

prior to probe presentation in various directions relative to the immediately previous fixation (one-back), the fixation prior to the immediately previous one (two-back), and the fixation before that one
(three-back) (see Fig. 3b).
manual reaction time to probes following serial search depends on
maintenance of the search array (as predicted by Tipper et al., 1994).
Third, the freely executed saccades of participants prior to the presentation of the probe showed the same bias that was evident in the
time to acquire the probe; that is, each saccade was more likely to
repeat the previous direction than to reverse it. This is precisely what
one would expect if the IOR that was seen in the time to find the probe
was operating equivalently on the freely made saccades during search.
And it is precisely such freely made saccades during visual search of
a scene that ought to be influenced by inhibition serving as a foraging
facilitator.

AcknowledgmentsThe research described here was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Collaborative
Projects Grant (Selection of Objects by the Primate Oculomotor System)
to R. Klein (principal investigator), D. Munoz, P. McMullen, and T.
Trappenberg.

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