Longer cue duration supports stable spatial gradients in multiple-cue inhibition of return

When multiple cues are presented simultaneously, inhibitory orienting effects can become organized around the center of gravity (CoG) of the cue array rather than individual cue locations. However, recent work using brief 50-ms cues found that this CoG-organized inhibition of return (IOR) was attenuated at longer cue-target intervals and failed to emerge even in single-cue conditions (Christie et al., 2021), leaving open whether cue duration contributes to durable, spatially organized inhibitory tagging. Here, we tested this possibility using 200-ms cues (the duration used in prior work establishing the CoG effect) across cue-target onset asynchronies (CTOAs) of 400 and 1000 ms, while recording saccadic reaction times (SRTs) in a multiple-cueing task. The 400-ms CTOA replicated conditions known to produce robust CoG effects, and the 1000-ms CTOA provided the novel empirical test. SRT decreased as the distance between the target and the cue-array CoG increased, particularly for cued targets, with CoG-related gradients evident at both CTOAs. Model comparisons on uncued trials indicated that neither CoG distance nor local distance independently accounted for a significant share of variance, suggesting that their relative contributions cannot be separated with the present dataset. These findings are consistent with cue duration being an important parameter in sustained, spatially organized IOR in multiple-cue displays.