The scope of no return: Openness predicts the spatial distribution of Inhibition of Return

How and what we attend to is foundational in determining the content of our experience, thus differences in attention contribute significantly to how we perceive the world, learn, and develop. Personality also plays a role in constraining how we learn to perceive the world and it is conceivable that some facets of personality interact with visual attention; however, the relationship between these two constitutional aspects of psychology remains unclear. To address this interplay between cognition and personality, we looked at how the Big Five personality traits relate to the spatial scope of attention, as indexed by the spatial distribution of Inhibition of Return (IOR). IOR is marked by a decrement in reaction time when a target appears at a cued location, more than 200 ms after that cue. As the cue/target distance increases there is a release from inhibition, providing a measure of the spatial distribution of IOR and reflecting the spatial scope of attention. The results presented here show personality does predict the distribution of IOR. Specifically, higher trait Openness is associated with a broader distribution of IOR and attention. This finding suggests there is an intimate connection between personality, particularly Openness, and the spatial allocation of attention.