Independent effects of endogenous and exogenous spatial cueing: inhibition of return at endogenously attended target locations

Inhibition of return (IOR) is thought to reflect a bias against returning attention to previously attended locations. According to this view, IOR should occur only if attention is withdrawn from the target location prior to target appearance. In the present study, endogenous attention and exogenous cueing were manipulated orthogonally. IOR was observed both when a target appeared at an unexpected location, and when a target appeared at the expected location. A similar pattern of results was obtained in a reanalysis of data from a study with Neglect patients. These results suggest that IOR is independent of endogenous orienting.