Resource Allocation Of Spatial Attention Is Object-based Inhibition Of Return

Inhibition of return (IOR) causes people to be slower to return their attention to a recently attended object (object-based IOR) or location (location-based IOR) when a cue precedes a target by more than 300ms.4 experiments systematically tested the hypothesis that the lower attention resource and more difficult of the task caused by bigger attention scope result in the appearance of IOR become longer and reverse at the end. Experiment 1 and experiment 2 tested the typical location-base IOR and object-based IOR on different SOAs. Experiment 3A and Experiment 3B tested the object-based IOR on different SOAs and systematically change the angles of sector, found that the IOR appeared later and disappeared and reversal at the longest SOA(1200ms) when the attention scope became bigger. Experiment 4A and 4B tested the object-based IOR on different SOAs and systematically change the radii of the sector and found the same result to experiment 3. The results of four experiments proved the hypothesis that lower attention resource lead to more difficult of task and meanwhile the longer SOA of the appearance of IOR.