How social is social inhibition of return?

Abstract

A number of studies have shown that the motor actions of one individual can affect the attention of an observer. In one notable example, "social inhibition of return," observers are relatively slow to initiate a response to a location where another individual has just responded. In the present article we examine the degree to which this phenomenon can be considered a social effect. We find that unlike the related social, or "joint," Simon effect, social inhibition of return is not influenced by competitive versus cooperative interaction, nor by live versus recorded interaction. We do find however that co-actors need to turn-take in order for the effect to occur. Thus, so-called "social" inhibition of return only reaches a minimal threshold to be considered a social phenomenon.

Attention allocation in complementary joint action: How joint goals affect spatial orienting

“…This difference between same-responses and different-responses reflects the well-established social IOR, i.e., the phenomenon of slowed return-responses to locations previously acted upon by another individual (Welsh et al, 2005). This result indicates -in line with previous research -that the social IOR occurs not only in live twoperson settings where participants perform manual reaching responses, but also if participants interact with a co-actor who is not physically present (see Atkinson et al, 2018;Doneva & Cole, 2014;Nafcha et al, 2020b; but see also Skarratt et al, 2010) and if responses are keypresses (see Manzone et al, 2017;Nafcha et al, 2020b).…”

“…Even though the present study did not primarily aim at contributing to the debate on how social the social IOR actually is (see, e.g., Atkinson et al, 2018;Doneva & Cole, 2014;Doneva et al, 2017;Nafcha et al, 2020a, b;Skarratt et al, 2010), it still makes a relevant contribution in the following respects. First, it reaffirmed previous findings showing that the social IOR occurs not only in live two-person settings but also if participants interact with a co-actor who is not physically present (compare Atkinson et al, 2018;Doneva & Cole, 2014;Nafcha et al, 2020b).…”

“…We determined our target sample size based on previous research combined with an a priori power analysis. In particular, we relied on a study by Atkinson et al (2018) that used a 2 × 2 within-subjects design and aimed to detect a potential interaction effect (just as in the present study; see below). Atkinson et al argued for a sample size of 36, based b) the present study (not drawn to scale).…”

Susceptibility to the fusion illusion is modulated during both action execution and action observation

“…It is the case that an experimental design which can effectively distinguish between the mere effects of motion alone and movement of a limb remain elusive due to the overlapping nature of the characteristics of the two categories of stimuli and potential influence of top-down influences of belief in the animacy of the stimulus (see Chandler-Mather, Welsh, Sparks, & Kritikos, in press). Nonetheless, given the substantial behavioural and neurophysiological evidence that cortical regions that are activated during the execution of action are also activated during the observation of movement (e.g., Mulligan et al, 2016aMulligan et al, , 2016bRizzolatti & Craighero, 2004) and that some social effects met the minimum criteria to be considered social (e.g., Atkinson, Millett, Donveva, Simpson, & Cole, 2018), it remains our contention that it is the sensorimotor activation during the execution and observation of goal-direct human movement Future research will need to be conducted to definitively distinguish these possibilities.…”

Gender and perceived cooperation modulate visual attention in a joint spatial cueing task

“…We found that highcooperative contexts increased inhibition of return effects. Other research, however, was unable to document any change in social inhibition of return effects when participants carried out a joint reaching task either as a cooperation or a competition (Atkinson et al, 2018), interacted with a similar or dissimilar interaction partner (Dalmaso et al, 2021), or competed versus cooperated in a joint perspectivetaking task (Surtees et al, 2021). One possibility is that if the interaction partner is rendered highly salient in two experiments conditions, participants co-represented their partner's task in both experimental conditions, resulting in a null finding.…”