Inhibition of return in saccadic eye movements

Inhibition of return (IOR) is a phenomenon in which responses generated to targets at previously attended locations are delayed. It has been suggested that IOR affords a mechanism for optimizing the inspection of novel locations and that it is generated by oculomotor reflexes mediated by the superior colliculus. In this investigation, we measured the effects of IOR on the metrics of saccadic eye movements made to novel and previously attended locations. Saccades made to cued target locations, as well as to other targets within the same hemifield, had longer latencies than saccades made towards the novel, uncued hemifield. We further found that the amplitudes of saccades towards the cued hemifield were more hypometric, but only when the amplitude could not be pre-programmed. These results provide evidence that IOR influences spatial, as well as temporal, parameters of saccadic eye movements and suggest that the exogenous orienting of attention, in addition to influencing target detection, also influences oculomotor programming.