Inhibition of return as a foraging facilitator in visual search: Evidence from long-term training

Inhibition of return (IOR) discourages visual attention from returning to previously attended locations, and has been theorized as a mechanism to facilitate foraging in visual search by inhibitory tagging of inspected items. Previous studies using visual search and probe-detection tasks (i.e., the probe-following-search paradigm) found longer reaction times (RTs) for probes appearing at the searched locations than probes appearing at novel locations. This IOR effect was stronger in serial than parallel search, favoring the foraging facilitator hypothesis. However, evidence for this hypothesis was still lacking because no attempt was made to study how IOR would change when search efficiency gradually improves. The current study employed the probe-following-search paradigm and long-term training to examine how IOR varied following search efficiency improvements across training days. According to the foraging facilitator hypothesis, inhibitory tagging is an after-effect of attentional engagement. Therefore, when attentional engagement in a visual search task is reduced via long-term training, the strength of inhibitory tagging decreases, thus predicting a reduced IOR effect. Consistent with this prediction, two experiments consistently showed that IOR decreased while search efficiency improved through training, although IOR reached the floor more quickly than search efficiency. These findings support the notion that IOR facilitates search performance via stronger inhibitory tagging in more difficult visual search.