Abstract: We report three experiments that examine the effects of practice on the attentional effects of exogenous cues. In all the experiments a location was cued by a peripheral exogenous cue. After a fixed stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA), a target appeared and had to be detected/discriminated. In experiment 1, a short SOA (100 ms) was used, and responding was facilitated for targets in the same location as the cue. This facilitation effect decreased with practice. Experiments 2 and 3 used a longer SOA (600 ms). In this case, responding to cued targets was impaired. This impairment is known as Inhibition of Return (IOR). Object- and Location-based IOR both decreased with practice (Exp. 2); and so did Object+Location IOR in static display (Exp. 3). These data could explain why other researchers have failed to show Object-based IOR in dynamic displays, and they show the importance of considering practice effects when studying attention.

(1997). UWB Psychology Mini-Conference