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Abstract:
Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to the slowing of a
response to a target stimulus presented in the same location as a
preceding stimulus. However, the IOR effects typically observed in
cue-target paradigms may reflect response inhibition associated
with withholding a response to the cue, rather than a genuine
oculomotor effect. This can be circumvented by using a
target-target paradigm, in which responses are made to all stimuli.
We compared the magnitude of tactile IOR from both cue-target and
target-target tasks involving identical inter-stimulus intervals.
Reaction times were measured using both foot pedal and vocal
responses. Tactile IOR was demonstrated in both cue-target and
target- target tasks and for both the foot and vocal responses.
However, IOR magnitude was significantly smaller in the
target-target task than in the cue-target task, regardless of the
mode of response. This implies that the magnitude of tactile IOR
may have been overestimated in the majority of previous studies
using the cue-target IOR design. Our results also provide the first
evidence that tactile IOR can affect vocal (ie non-spatial)
responses. Finally, and in contrast to audition, our results show
that tactile IOR can be demonstrated in an intramodal target-target
paradigm.
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