Exogenous cuing of distractor location facilitates location selection by inhibition of return

Attention capture by an exogenous cue can result in slowed responses to a target, which appeared at that cued location later. This is the phenomenon of inhibition of return (IOR). In the current study, the effect of IOR on performance in a location selection task was studied. A target and a distractor were presented at the same time, and the participants were instructed to indicate the location of the target by manual response. The results showed that it took longer to respond to the target at the cued location. More importantly, it took a shorter time to respond to the target when the distractor was presented at the cued location. These findings support the idea that IOR can facilitate performance in a target selection task if the distractor location is cued.