Deficient inhibition of return in subclinical OCD only when attention is directed to the threatening aspects of a stimulus

Background - Inhibition of return (IOR) is thought to reflect inhibition of previously attended but irrelevant stimuli. Deficient IOR would increase the likelihood of revisiting previously searched locations or objects, thus leading to unproductive perseverations. Method - Therefore, using a novel IOR task, we investigated whether high scoring checkers attentional biases to threat would result in dysfunctional inhibitory functioning compared to low checkers. In two tasks, we compared 53 subclinical high and 49 low checkers regarding IOR effects for stimuli that were concordant with the concerns of high but not of low checkers (electrical kitchen appliances: e.g., toaster, kettle). The difference between the two tasks was the cueing procedure. In one task, an appliance was switched “ON” and “OFF” as an unpredictive cue, drawing attention to the functionality of the stimulus. Results - In this task, IOR was specifically attenuated in high checkers. In the other task, however, the cue was more abstract in form of a yellow outline that appeared around one of two appliances. Although the appliance was either “ON” or “OFF,” this did not seem to matter and high checkers revealed a typical IOR pattern similar to low checkers. Conclusions - We conclude that IOR mechanisms might not be generally deficient in high checkers; rather only when attention is drawn to the threatening aspects of ecologically valid stimuli, then disengagement of attention is deficient in high checkers. We make suggestions on how our task-specific findings may inform cognitive interventions that target attentional control in the treatment of checking/obsessive–compulsive disorder.

Observation of a finger or an object movement primes imitative responses differentially

Behavioural advantages for imitation of human movements over movements instructed by other visual stimuli are attributed to an ‘action observation-execution matching’ (AOEM) mechanism. Here, we demonstrate that priming/exogenous cueing with a videotaped finger movement stimulus (S1) produces specific congruency effects in reaction times (RTs) of imitative responses to a target movement (S2) at defined stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). When contrasted with a moving object at an SOA of 533 ms, only a human movement is capable of inducing an effect reminiscent of ‘inhibition of return’ (IOR), i.e. a significant advantage for imitation of a subsequent incongruent as compared to a congruent movement. When responses are primed by a finger movement at SOAs of 533 and 1,200 ms, inhibition of congruent or facilitation of incongruent responses, respectively, is stronger as compared to priming by a moving object. This pattern does not depend on whether S2 presents a finger movement or a moving object, thus effects cannot be attributed to visual similarity between S1 and S2. We propose that, whereas both priming by a finger movement and a moving object induces processes of spatial orienting, solely observation of a human movement activates AOEM. Thus, S1 immediately elicits an imitative response tendency. As an overt imitation of S1 is inadequate in the present setting, the response is inhibited which, in turn, modulates congruency effects.

Inhibition of object identity in inhibition of return:implications for encoding and retrieving inhibitory processes

Inhibition of return (IOR) effects, in which participants detect a target in a cued box more slowly than one in an uncued box, suggest that behavior is aided by inhibition of recently attended irrelevant locations. To investigate the controversial question of whether inhibition can be applied to object identity in these tasks, in the present research we presented faces upright or inverted during cue and/or target sequences. IOR was greater when both cue and target faces were upright than when cue and/or target faces were inverted. Because the only difference between the conditions was the ease of facial recognition, this result indicates that inhibition was applied to object identity. Interestingly, inhibition of object identity affected IOR both whenencoding a cue face andretrieving information about a target face. Accordingly, we propose that episodic retrieval of inhibition associated with object identity may mediate behavior in cuing tasks.

Attentional inhibition determines emotional responses to unfamiliar faces

Complex abstract images that are ignored in a simple localization task are subsequently judged more negatively in an emotional evaluation task than previously unseen or attended images, suggesting that attentional inhibition may have affective consequences (Raymond, Fenske, & Tavassoli, in press). We examined the generality of this finding by asking whether inhibitory processes might also influence the generation of emotional responses to unfamiliar faces. To do this, we incorporated an emotional evaluation task within a paradigm that has been used to demonstrate long-term inhibition-of-return (IOR) of attention (Tipper, Grison, & Kessler, in press). On each 2-task trial, observers were first shown a unique pair of unfamiliar faces while performing a speeded go/no-go task. In this task, observers were required to withhold a response if there was an abrupt onset of an exogenous cue (no-go trials), and to make a response if a different stimulus was presented (go ‘catch’ trials). Following the completion of an intervening task, observers where asked to make an affective evaluation about the faces they had previously seen in the go/no-go task (e.g., Which of these people looks more friendly?). We found that observers were less likely to make positive affective responses to faces that attention had been exogenously drawn to in no-go trials than to faces to which attention had never been exogenously allocated. These results converge with our previous finding to suggest that inhibition may be associated with an episode encoded into memory, and that later retrieval acts to reinstate inhibitory processing. Importantly, our results suggest that this inhibitory processing involves affective devaluation, which may serve to encourage examination of new information.

Long-term inhibition of return of attention

During search of the environment, the inhibition of the return (IOR) of attention to already-examined information ensures that the target will ultimately be detected. Until now, inhibition was assumed to support search of information during one processing episode. However, in some situations search may have to be completed long after it was begun. We therefore propose that inhibition can be associated with an episode encoded into memory such that later retrieval reinstates inhibitory processing and encourages examination of new information. In two experiments in which attention was drawn to face stimuli with an exogenous cue, we demonstrated for the first time the existence of long-term IOR. Interestingly, this was the case only for faces in the left visual field, perhaps because more efficient processing of faces in the right hemisphere than the left hemisphere results in richer, more retrievable memory representations.