Temporal oculomotor inhibition of return and spatial facilitation of return in a visual encoding task

Abstract

Oculomotor inhibition of return (O-IOR) is an increase in saccade latency prior to an eye movement to a recently fixated location compared to other locations. It has been proposed that this temporal O-IOR may have spatial consequences, facilitating foraging by inhibiting return to previously attended regions. In order to test this possibility, participants viewed arrays of objects and of words while their eye movements were recorded. Temporal O-IOR was observed, with equivalent effects for object and word arrays, indicating that temporal O-IOR is an oculomotor phenomenon independent of array content. There was no evidence for spatial inhibition of return (IOR). Instead, spatial facilitation of return was observed: participants were significantly more likely than chance to make return saccades and to re-fixate just-visited locations. Further, the likelihood of making a return saccade to an object or word was contingent on the amount of time spent viewing that object or word before leaving it. This suggests that, unlike temporal O-IOR, return probability is influenced by cognitive processing. Taken together, these results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that IOR functions as a foraging facilitator. The results also provide strong evidence for a different oculomotor bias that could serve as a foraging facilitator: saccadic momentum, a tendency to repeat the most recently executed saccade program. We suggest that models of visual attention could incorporate saccadic momentum in place of IOR.

The role of memory for visual search in scenes

“…14 Although IOR is used in models that try to mimic natural viewing behavior, 23,24 recent studies have found evidence against IOR in real-world scenes. 25,26 Rather than an inhibition of the previous fixation location, Smith and Henderson, 27 for example, reported "facilitation of return" during scene viewing. The probability of refixating the last location was greater than or equal to other distancematched locations, providing evidence against the view that IOR drives attention through a scene by decreasing the probability of return.…”

“…Although IOR is used in models that try to mimic natural viewing behavior, recent studies have found evidence against IOR in real‐world scenes . Rather than an inhibition of the previous fixation location, Smith and Henderson, for example, reported “facilitation of return” during scene viewing.…”

Scanpaths of Complex Image Viewing: Insights From Experimental and Modeling Studies

“…Location of Stigchel, & Hollingworth, 2009;Hooge, Over, van Wezel, Maarten, & Frens, 2005;Luke, Schmidt, & Henderson, 2013) concepts. In particular, the difference between fixation duration of regular and the RFs is in agreement with known data (Bays & Husain, 2012;Hooge et al, 2005;Lupianez et al, 2006).…”

Spatial and Temporal Properties of Gaze Return Fixations While Viewing Affective Images

“…One approach to solving this problem is to study the local elements of the viewing trajectories, in particular, the return gaze fixations on the recently viewed image areas. More and more facts are accumulating about the phenomena of Facilitation of Return [5,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15], but up to now the concept of Inhibition of Return has dominated [7,16]. The oculomotor, endogenous, and exogenous factors that determine the occurrence of the phenomenon of inhibition of return, its spatial and temporal properties are analyzed in detail [7,[10][11][12][17][18][19][20].…”

“…It is assumed that return-inhibiting mechanisms dominate to solve visual search problems and examine simple images [7,11,20,22]. Instead, the phenomenon of facilitating return often occurs in the visualization of complex images and the resolution of complex visual tasks [9,12].…”