The Modulation Mechanism Of Attention For Inhibition Of Return And Its Implications For Education

Inhibition of return(IOR)refers to a mechanism that shows slow response to the previous location.The re-orientation hypothesis is widely accepted by many researchers,that the disengagement of attention is necessary for the generation of IOR.However,in the study of endogenous cues,exdogenous cues with IOR,the researchers found that IOR could be produced and the effect was not affected regardless of when attention was not dissociated from cued location.The present studies focuses on the relationship between IOR and exogenous attention.Through further analysis,the essence of previous studies of exogenous control of attention is related with re-orienting instead of attentional disengagement.Therefore,we redefine the variables to find out the potential relevance of attentional disengagement and IOR,and try to make a theoretical supplement to the re-orientation hypothesis.In Experiment 1,we used a similar paradigm of Martín-Arévalo,Kingstone and Lupiá?ez(2013)and the biggest difference was the set of central cue.The behavioral results showedthat the IOR effect was greater when the attention was disengaged from the cued position quickly.EEG results showed significant interaction in N1,but no significant IOR effect was found.This result suggested that the "class" IOR effect produced by central cues may be confused with the IOR effect produced by peripheral cues.However,the interaction between behavior and EEG data showed that the disengagement of attention could affect the IOR effect.In Experiment 2,the central cue in experiments 1 was presented in the peripheral cue location to eliminate the "class" IOR effect.The behavior results showed that the effect of IOR was more significant when attention was disengaged from cued location quickly.Further,the EEG study of arrow leads showed that there was a more significant IOR effect for the quick disengagement of attention.These results showed that the level of attentional disengagement could affect the magnitude of IOR effect.We named this effect as the modulation of attentional disengagement of IOR.In Experiment 3,we tried to use the modulation of attentional disengagement to explain the relations between emotional process and IOR.For both behavioral and EEG data,the IOR effect of lowly negative(LN)cues was more significant than highly(HN)and moderately(MN)negative cues.We believe that,compared to LN cues,MN and HN cues are more likely to attract attention,resulting in difficulty in the separation of attention from the cued location and also resulting in smaller IOR effects.Experiment 4 investigated attentional disengagement and different levels of attentional disengagement of IOR in children.The results found that attentional disengagement can effectively make young children to produce IOR,and the modulation of attentional disengagement also showed in children.The above results indicate that attentional disengagement is one of the conditions for producing IOR that named “Modulation ofAttentional Disengagement of IOR effect”(MAD IOR effect),and the different levels of disengagement will affect the magnitude of IOR.These provide a theoretical supplement for the re-orienting hypothesis.