Psychology
2012. Vol.3, No.10, 899-905
Published Online October 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/psych) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/psych.2012.310135
Cue Duration Affects Attentional Capture without
Modulating Inhibition of Return
Yukihisa Matsuda, Syoichi Iwasaki
Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
Received July 20th, 2012; revised August 22nd, 2012; accepted September 15th, 2012
In the cueing paradigm, an abrupt onset of the cue brings about both the facilitation effect and inhibition
of return (IOR) depending on the cue-target interval. Previous studies showed that physical properties of
the cue such as duration affect the occurrences of facilitation effect and IOR. However, other study indi-
cated that cue duration did not affect these two effects. The first aim of this study was to clarify how cue
duration affects the facilitation effect. The results showed that the temporal properties of the cue influ-
enced the facilitation effect. The second aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the
magnitude of the facilitation effect and that of IOR with the results in Experiments 1 and 2. There were
four findings that suggested discrepancies in the effect of spatial cueing between the facilitation effect and
IOR. In conclusion, these two processes were driven by distinct mechanisms.
Keywords: Attentional Mechanism; Attentional Capture; Inhibition of Return; Cue Duration; Brightness
Change
Introduction
Visual attention enables one to select specific information in
the visual scene. Since Posner developed the spatial cueing
paradigm (Posner, 1978, 1980), two phenomena concerning
bottom-up (or exogenous) attention have been well documented.
In the cueing paradigm, two peripheral boxes (placeholders) are
presented with one box for each visual field near the fixation
point. An abrupt change in luminance (usually its increase)
occurs as the cue. After the cue presentation, a target is pre-
sented at one of the two peripheral boxes. Trials in which the
cue and the target appeared at the same location are classified
as valid trials, and those in which they appeared at different
locations (e.g., the cue is presented at the left box and target is
presented at the right box or vice versa) are classified as invalid
trials. Usually target detection reaction time (RT) is the de-
pendent measure. RTs for detecting target are shorter in the
valid condition than those for the invalid condition, because
target processing is facilitated by attention captured by the cue.
If the time interval between the onset of the cue and the onset
of the target (stimulus onset asynchrony; SOA) is greater than
approximately 250 ms, the results are reversed: RTs in the valid
condition are longer than those in the invalid condition. The
former is called attentional capture (or facilitation), and the
latter is called inhibition of return (IOR; Posner, & Cohen,
1984; Posner, Rafal, Choate, & Vaughan, 1985; Taylor & Klein,
1998; Klein, 2000).
Previous studies have shown that physical properties of the
cue, such as brightness (Wright & Richard, 2003), spatial posi-
tion (Pratt, Hillis, & Gold, 2001; McAuliffe & Pratt, 2005),
degree of eccentricity (O’donnell & Pratt, 1996; Berger, Dori,
& Henik, 1999) and duration (Berger et al., 1999; Maruff,
Yucel, Danckert, Stuart, & Currie, 1999; Collie, Maruff, Yuchel,
Danckert, & Currie, 2000; McAuliffe & Pratt, 2005) affect the
occurrences of attentional capture and IOR, and also their mag-
nitudes. Concerning cue duration, the studies conducted by
Maruff et al. (1999) and Collie et al. (2000) suggested that tim-
ing of the cue relative to the target presentation influenced oc-
currence and the magnitude of the facilitation effect. If the tar-
get was presented before the cue offset (overlap cue condition),
the facilitation was observed at the 150 ms SOA. By contrast, if
the target was presented after the cue offset (non-overlap cue
condition), the facilitation effect was not observed even when
SOA was 150 ms. Because many studies that have found the
facilitation effect used the overlap cue (i.e., Posner & Cohen,
1984; Maylor, 1985; Rafal, Calabresi, Brennan, & Sciolto,
1989), Maruff et al. (1999) and Collie et al. (2000) concluded
that occurrence and the magnitude of the facilitation effect were
affected by the temporal overlap of the two stimuli. Contrary to
their conclusion, however, Berger et al. (1999) have shown that
the magnitude of facilitation in the overlap cue condition was
no different in magnitude from that of the non-overlap cue con-
dition. Berger et al. (1999) compared the cue duration of 200
ms (thus the cue overlapping with the target) with that of 100
ms (non-overlap cue) with the same SOA of 150 ms and found
that these two cue durations produced comparable size of fa-
cilitation. Thus, the question whether the cue duration could
modulate the facilitation effect still seems to remain open.
This study was designed to gain understanding of how cue
duration affects the facilitation and IOR. Although, Maruff et al.
(1999) and Collie et al. (2000) examined the effect of cue dura-
tion on the facilitation effect in the simple detection task, there
were methodological problem in their studies. Maruff et al.
(1999) and Collie et al. (2000) used green circular placeholders
and a red cue. The red cue was wider than the green place-
holder and extinguished at the end of the cue presentation time.
Therefore the cue in their studies appeared as a new object with
an abrupt onset, which was suggested to be more powerful in
capturing attention (Yantis & Jonides, 1984; Jonides & Yantis,
1988). On the other hand, Berger et al. (1999) used a more

Y. MATSUDA, S. IWASAKI
conventional cueing method with two boxes presented as place-
holders and brightness change as the cue. Thus, it is possible
that these methodological discrepancies might have led to the
contradictory results. Following more conventional procedures
of the spatial cueing method used in the majority of the spatial
cueing studies, two square boxes were used as placeholders and
brightening of one of these boxes was defined as the cue in this
study.
The second aim of this study was to examine the relationship
between the magnitude of the facilitation effect and that of IOR.
Since the suggestion by Posner and Cohen (1984) that IOR is a
result of attention being directed to the location a moment be-
fore, it is generally believed that a single attentional mechanism
is responsible for these two phenomena. Maylor (1985) has
showed such an association between the facilitation effect and
IOR using a double cueing paradigm. In this paradigm, the cue
is presented at two locations of four peripheral boxes. Maylor
(1985) confirmed that the double cue produced half the magni-
tude of the facilitation effect as compared with that produced by
a single cue at a short SOA. The double cues also halved the
magnitude of IOR for a longer SOA. These results, to which
Berlucchi (2006) referred to as the “forgotten” double-cueing
experiments, constitute strong evidence for the association be-
tween IOR and attentional mechanism. Reuter-Lorenz, Jha, and
Rosenquist (1996) also demonstrated that IOR was dependent
on attentional facilitation. Focusing on target modality and
target intensity, the cue properties that were well known to
influence the magnitude of the facilitation effect, they showed
that at longer SOAs both of these properties affected the mag-
nitude of IOR alike. Thus they concluded that IOR was pro-
duced by the attentional mechanism that controlled attentional
facilitation.
In contrast to these studies, there are some other studies that
have demonstrated that the facilitation effect and IOR are dis-
sociable. Maylor (1985) demonstrated it with temporal order
judgment (TOJ). In TOJ, two targets were presented in short
succession at two placeholders after the cue was presented with
various SOAs. The participants required to judge the order of
the two targets. Even when two targets were presented simul-
taneously, the target at the cued location was perceived to be
the first of the two in the shorter SOA. Contrary to the faster
perception at a short SOA, which was due to the attentional
facilitation, the cued target was not judged to be delayed for the
long SOA at which IOR would have been obtained with the
detection task (see also Gibson & Egeth, 1994). Collie et al.
(2000) compared spatial distributions of the facilitation and
IOR. In their study, five placeholders were used, one at the
fixation point, other four at 9˚ and 18˚ from the fixation point,
two for each visual field. When the cue was presented at 18˚,
the facilitation effect was also found at the 9˚, whereas there
was no IOR at this location. This result indicated that the atten-
tional spotlight had covered a wider area around the cued spot,
while IOR was limited to the area within the placeholder, sug-
gesting that these two attentional effects reflected different
manners in which attention operated on the processing of target.
Here, we focused on the relationship between the magnitude
of the facilitation effect and IOR by comparing these across
participants with the conventional spatial cueing task. The basic
design of the experiment was identical with that adopted by
Reuter-Lorenz et al. (1996). If two phenomena were driven by
one and the same mechanism, those participants who show
larger facilitation at the short SOA would also be those who
show larger IOR at the long SOA and vice versa. Contrarily, if
the two phenomena were driven by separable mechanisms,
there would be no relationship (correlations) between the mag-
nitude of the facilitation effect and IOR. The modulation of
target brightness as used by Reuter-Lorenz et al. (1996) might
have affected the two attentional effects in the opposite direc-
tion; increased brightness of the target would increase its power
of attentional capture, while counteracting the IOR effect of the
cue since attention was more powerfully attracted to the
brighter target. The important point in the cueing paradigm is
that how (much) attention is captured by the cue, which then
affects the information processing of the target through atten-
tion summoned by the cue. It may be argued that the experi-
mental procedure used by Reuter-Lorenz et al. (1996) caused
attention to be controlled by the bright target, rather than by the
cue, which may have confounded their results. Thus, we ma-
nipulated a cue property (i.e., its duration) and then compared
RTs to the target that was kept to be identical across the cue
conditions. This constitutes a more direct test of the independ-
ence of the facilitation effect and IOR because the attention to
the cue was manipulated by the cue durations, while attention
to the target was kept to be the same across the conditions.
Experiment 1
The aim of Experiment 1 was to examine that how cue dura-
tion affects the facilitation effect and IOR. Here, cue was de-
fined as brightness changing as majority of the spatial cueing
studies. If properties of the cue presenting made different re-
sults between Maruff et al. (1999), Collie et al. (2000) and
Berger et al. (1999), the results would be identical with Berger
et al. (1999), in this study.
Method
Participants. Sixteen participants (mean age 19.3 yr; 9 males)
with normal or corrected-to-normal vision participated in the
study. All participants were naive as to the pur-pose of the ex-
periment.
Apparatus and stimuli. The stimuli were presented on a 19-in.
color screen monitor. Presentation of stimuli was performed
with an Intel Pentium 4 computer. A fixation cross (“+”; 0.5˚)
that was at the center of screen and two peripheral boxes (1.8˚
in height and width) located 9.3˚ to the left and right of the
fixation cross were presented on a black background. The fixa-
tion cross and two boxes had a luminance of 4.3 cd/m2. The
spatial cue consisted of a luminance increment of 4.3 cd/m2 to
43.8 cd/m2. The target was a small filled square (0.2˚) which
appeared in the center of one of the two peripheral boxes. The
luminance of the target was 43.8 cd/m2.
Procedure. The experiment took place in a dimly lit and
sound-attenuated room. The participants were seated facing a
computer monitor at the distance of 63 cm. Their heads were
stabilized with an adjustable chin-rest, and the computer key-
board was placed in front of the participants. Each trial started
with the presentation of the fixation cross and two peripheral
boxes against black background (Figure 1). A short warning
tone was presented at the beginning of the trial and was fol-
lowed by the fixation cross and two peripheral boxes. They
were presented for 1500 ms, after which the peripheral cue was
presented for 30 or 300 ms at either the left or right peripheral
900

Y. MATSUDA, S. IWASAKI
(a) (b)
Figure 1.
Illustrations of the trial sequence used in Experiments 1 and 2. The panel (a) is the illustration of the non-overlap
condition. The panel (b) is the illustration of the overlap condition. If SOA was 150 ms and cue duration was 200 or
300 ms, cue and the target were overlapped while 50 or 150 ms. The target was presented until response.
box. These two cue duration conditions were run in separated
blocks. The SOA between the cue and the target were randomly
selected among 150,450, and 800 ms. The target could appear
at either the left or right peripheral box after the peripheral cue
was presented. The target remained on the screen until the key
was pressed or 1500 ms had elapsed. A short tone was pre-
sented as a feedback signal for key pressing. The intertrial in-
terval was 1500 ms. Participants were instructed to maintain
fixation on the fixation cross during a trial, ignoring the onset
of the peripheral cue and to press the space bar with their right
hand as quickly as possible when the target appeared. RT was
measured from the onset of the target to response execution.
Forty percent of all the trials were valid trials and another 40%
were invalid trials. The remaining trials (20%) were catch trials
in which no target appeared. If participants responded during a
catch trial, a beep one was presented as a warning. A practice
block of 24 trials was run before the experimental blocks. There
were two experiment blocks, one for each cue duration condi-
tion, with the total number of trials of 432 trials. The order of
the blocks was randomized across participants. Short rests were
given after 108 trials, and a longer rest was inserted between
the blocks.
Analyses. Three-way mixed analyses of variance (ANOVA)
were conducted for RT. Effect sizes for analysis of variance
were calculated as partial eta-squared (2
p
η) and for t tests,
Cohen’s d. Follow-up t tests were performed when interactions
were significant.
Results
The RTs either over 1000 ms or less than 200 ms were dis-
carded from the data analysis. Standard deviation (SD) was
obtained in each condition, and then the RTs over 2.5 SD of the
mean of each condition were also discarded. Overall, 2.48% of
the data were removed on average across all participants.
RTs. Figure 2 showed the results. Analysis for RTs, a three-
way mixed ANOVA was performed with cue duration (30 and
300 ms) × trial type (valid and invalid) × SOA (150, 450, and
800 ms) as within-group factors. The main effect of cue dura-
tion was not significant [F(1, 15) = 0.49, p > .44, 2
p
η = 0.003].
The main effect of SOA was significant [F(1, 15) = 87.74, p
< .001, 2
p
η = 0.85]. The main effect of trial type was signifi-
cant [F(1, 15) = 20.18, p < .001, 2
p
η = 0.57]. The two-way
interaction between cue duration and SOA was significant [F(2,
30) = 5.09, p < .05, 2
p
η = 0.25]. The two-way interaction be-
tween cue duration and trial type was not significant [F(1, 15) =
0.001, p > .97, 2
p
η < 0.001]. The two-way interaction between
SOA and trial type was significant [F(2, 30) = 26.25, p < 0.001,
2
p
η = 0.64]. The three-way interaction was significant [F(2, 30)
= 4.09, p < 0.05, 2
p
η = 0.21].
Our main interest was in comparing valid RTs and invalid
RTs in each SOA and cue duration condition. A significant
difference between valid and invalid RTs was the evidence that
the facilitation effect or IOR was found depending on the direc-
tion of the RT difference. Simple effects of the three-way in-
teraction indicated that difference between valid RTs and inva-
lid RTs did not reach a significance level for the 30 ms cue
duration, but it was significant for the 300 ms cue duration in
the 150 ms SOA [F(1, 90) = 7.26, p < 0.001, 2
p
η = 0.08]. These
results indicated that the overlap cue induced the facilitation
effect but the non-overlap cue did not. In the 450 ms SOA, the
differences between valid RTs and invalid RTs reached a sig-
nificant level in the 30 ms cue duration [F(1, 90) = 18.70, p <
0.001, 2
p
η = 0.17], and in the 300 ms cue duration [F(1, 90) =
19.37, p < 0.001, 2
p
η = 0.18]. In the 800 ms SOA, difference
between valid RTs and invalid RTs reached a significant level
in the 30 ms cue duration [F(1, 90) = 21.15, p < 0.001, 2
p
η =
0.19], and in the 300 ms cue duration [F(1, 90) = 44.15, p <
0.001, 2
p
η = 0.33]. As can be seen from Figure 2, the latter
two differences were IORs with slower RTs for the valid condi-
tions relative to the invalid conditions.
Discussion
The results showed that the overlap cue (300 ms cue duration)
led to a significant facilitation effect with faster RTs for the
valid condition than those for the invalid condition in the 150
ms SOA. In contrast, there was no difference in RTs be-tween
the valid and invalid conditions for the non-overlap cue (30 ms
cue duration). Thus, the facilitation effect was differentially
affected by the cue duration. In the 450 and 800 ms SOA when
IORs were observed, there were significant differences between
valid RTs and invalid RTs for both cue durations.
Unlike the facilitation effect that was found only with the
overlap cue in the 150 ms SOA, IOR was not affected by the
temporal property of the cue. This discrepancy may be a piece
of evidence that there were separate underlying mechanisms for
the facilitation effect and IOR.

Y. MATSUDA, S. IWASAKI
(a)
(b)
Figure 2.
Mean reaction times as a function of SOA for valid
RTs (solid lines) and invalid RTs (dashed lines). The
panel (a) is the illustration of the 30 ms cue duration
condition (non-overlap cue). The panel (b) is the il-
lustration of the 300 ms cue duration condition (over-
lap cue).
Experiment 2
In Experiment 1, both overlap and non-overlap cues were
used. Although the temporal property of the cue affected
whether attentional facilitation was observed or not, it is not
clear whether this facilitation was caused by the presence of the
cue (remaining visible or disappeared when the target was pre-
sented) or durations of the cue was critical in producing the
results. To examine which factor was critical for the presence
of the facilitation effect shown in Experiment 1, four cue dura-
tions (50, 100, 200, and 300 ms) and two SOAs (150 and 450
ms) were used in Experiment 2. If presence of the cue were
critical, neither 50 nor 100 ms cues would show the facilitation
effect in the 150 ms SOA, whereas the cue duration was the
critical factor then the facilitation effect would increase with
the cue duration.
The aim of Experiment 2 was to examine the relationship
between the facilitation effect and IOR. We examined the rela-
tionship between the facilitation effect and IOR with two
analyses. First, correlations between the facilitation effect and
IOR were calculated. If IOR and the facilitation effect were
controlled by the same attentional mechanism, there should be
negative correlations between these two attentional phenomena
(Notably, the magnitude of facilitation effect and IOR were
calculated by invalid RTs minus valid RTs. Thus, large nega-
tive number indicates large magnitude of IOR, and large posi-
tive number indicates large magnitude of facilitation effect).
The correlations were calculated separately for each cue dura-
tion condition. Second, we compared the magnitude of IOR
between the non-overlap cue condition and the overlap cue
condition (see correlations between the facilitation effect and
IOR, and also comparisons of IOR with the overlap cue and the
non-overlap cue in the results). If IOR and the facilitation effect
are dominated by the same attentional mechanism, a manipula-
tion that affects one effect of attention (e.g., facilitation) to
some extent should affect the other (e.g., IOR) as well to the
same extent. For this comparison, we combined the data of 15
participants from Experiment 1 and those of 16 participants
from Experiment 2 to increase the size of the data pool for each
condition. The RTs in the 50 ms cue duration condition of Ex-
periment 1 and those of the 30 ms cue duration condition of
Experiment 2 were combined as the non-overlap cue condition.
The RTs in the 300 ms cue duration condition of Experiments 1
and 2 were combined as the overlap cue condition. Third, we
compared IORs of the two groups formed by the median split
based on the facilitation (see comparisons of two IOR groups
formed by the magnitude of facilitation in the results). If the
same attentional mechanism is underlying the facilitation effect
and IOR, it would be expected that participants who showed
larger facilitation should also show larger IOR, and those
whose facilitation was smaller would show smaller IOR.
Method
Participants. Fifteen participants (mean age 18.9 yr; 8 males)
with normal or corrected-to-normal vision participated in the
study. All participants were naïve as to the purpose of the ex-
periment.
Procedure. Procedure and materials were the same in ex-
periment 1, with the following exceptions. First, there were four
cue durations (50, 100, 200 and 300 ms). Second, there were
two SOAs, of 150 and 450 ms. A practice block of 24 trials was
run before the experimental blocks. There were four experiment
blocks, which consisted of four cue duration conditions with a
total of 480 trials. The SOAs were randomized within a block.
The order of the blocks was randomized across participants. A
short rest was inserted after 60 trials, and longer rests were
given every two blocks.
Results
The RTs either over 1000 ms or less than 200 ms were dis-
carded from the data analysis. After this elimination procedure
SD was obtained for each condition. Then the RTs outside of
2.5 SD of the mean of each condition were further removed.
Overall, 6.02% of the data were removed on the average across
all participants.
RTs. Figure 3 showed the results. A three-way mixed
ANOVA was performed on RTs with cue duration (50, 100,
902

Y. MATSUDA, S. IWASAKI
(a) (b) (c) (d)
Figure 3.
Mean reaction time (ms) as a function of SOA for valid RTs (solid lines) and invalid RTs (dashed lines).
Table 1.
Correlations between facilitation effect and IOR for each condition of
the cue and SOA.
200, and 300 ms) × trial type (valid and invalid) × SOA (150
and 450 ms) as within-group factors. The main effect of cue
duration was not significant [F(3, 42) = 0.82, p > 0.48, 2
p
η =
0.06]. The main effect of SOA was significant [F(1, 14) =
62.63, p < 0.001, 2
p
η = 0.82]. The main effect of trial type was
significant [F(1, 14) = 17.57, p < .001, 2
p
η = 0.56]. The two-
way interaction between cue duration and SOA was significant
[F(3, 42) = 8.65, p < 0.001, 2
p
η = 0.38]. The two-way interac-
tion between cue duration and trial type was significant [F(3,
42) = 8.95, p < 0.001, 2
p
η = 0.39]. The two-way interaction
between SOA and trial type was significant [F(1, 14) = 119.95,
p < 0.001, 2
p
η = 0.90]. The three-way interaction was not sig-
nificant [F(3, 42) = 0.15, p > 0.93, 2
p
η = 0.01].
1 2 3 4
1) Non-overlap cue, 150 ms SOA -
2) Non-overlap cue, 450 ms SOA .30 -
3) Overlap cue, 150 ms SOA .60* .19 -
4) Overlap cue, 450 ms SOA .20 .45* .11 -
those in the overlap cue condition did not reach significance.
The lack of significant correlations did not support the conven-
tional idea that the facilitation effect and IOR were driven by
the same mechanism.
Although no significant three-way interaction was found, we
conducted analyses of the simple effects since our main interest
was to compare valid and invalid RTs for each SOA by cue
duration condition, separately. In the 150 ms SOA, differences
between valid RTs and invalid RTs were not significant in the
50 and 100 ms cue durations, but they were significant for the
200 ms cue duration [F(1, 112) = 3.96, p < 0.05, 2
p
η = 0.03]
and for the 300 ms cue duration [F(1, 112) = 10.43, p < 0.01,
2
p
η = 0.09]. These results indicated that the overlap cues could
induce facilitation but non-overlap cues could not. In the 450
ms SOA when IOR was expected, all the comparisons indicated
significant differences between valid RTs and invalid RTs for
the 50 ms cue duration [F(1, 112) = 73.79, p < 0.001, 2
p
η =
0.39], for the 100 ms cue duration [F(1, 112) = 60.19, p < 0.001,
2
p
η = 0.35], for the 200 ms cue duration [F(1, 112) = 34.23, p <
0.01, 2
p
η = 0.23], and for the 300 ms cue duration [F(1, 112) =
30.93, p < 0.001, 2
p
η = 0.22], with slower RTs for the valid
condition relative to those of the invalid condition.
Comparisons of IOR with the overlap cue and the non-over-
lap cue. Within-subjects t tests were performed on the magni-
tude of IOR of the cue duration conditions. It revealed that the
IORs of the two cue durations were comparable in magnitude
regardless the magnitude of the facilitation effect [t(30) = 1.87,
p > 0.07, d = 0.02].
Comparisons of two IOR groups formed by the magnitude of
the facilitation effect. Top twelve participants who showed
larger magnitude of the facilitation effect were assigned to the
facilitation group. Twelve other participants who showed small-
ler facilitation were grouped as non-facilitation group. The
classifications were done separately for each cue duration con-
dition. Independent-sample t tests were performed on the mag-
nitude of IOR (Figure 4). In the non-overlap cue condition, the
magnitude of IOR of the two facilitation groups were compara-
ble [t(38) = 1.72, p > .33, d = 0.41]. This was also the case for
the overlap cue condition [t(38) = 1.72, p > .69, d = 0.16].
Again, the lack of significant differences indicated that IOR and
the facilitation effect were not controlled by the same mecha-
nism.
Correlations between the facilitation effect and IOR. Corre-
lations between facilitation and IOR were calculated (Table 1).
The magnitude of the facilitation effect in the non-overlap cue
condition correlated with that in the overlap cue condition (r =
0.60, p < 0.01). The magnitude of IOR in the non-overlap cue
condition also correlated with that in the overlap cue condition
(r = 0.45, p < 0.05). These results indicated that individuals who
showed larger facilitation or IOR in the non-overlap cue condi-
tion also showed larger effects in the overlap cue condition. In
contrast, the correlations between the magnitude of the facilita-
tion effect and that of IOR in the non-overlap cue condition nor
General Discussion
The first aim of this study was to shed light on the question
of how the cue duration affects the facilitation effect and IOR.
The type of the cue used in the studies of Maruff et al. (1999)

Y. MATSUDA, S. IWASAKI
(a)
(b)
Figure 4.
Mean magnitude of IOR of larger and smaller facili-
tation group. The panel (a) showed the results of
comparison with the non-overlap cue. The panel (b)
showed the results of comparison with the overlap
cue. The magnitude of IOR was calculated by invalid
RTs minus valid RTs. Error bars indicate standard
error.
and Collie et al. (2000) might have led to their findings that
these two attentional effects were correlated because their cue
was presented as a new object with an abrupt onset, rather than
more conventional type of the cue of incremental brightness
change used in majority of the spatial cueing studies (e.g. Ber-
ger et al., 1999). In this study, we used the latter type of more
conventional cueing procedure (i.e., brightening of one of two
boxes) with a small dot as the target. In Experiments 1 and 2,
the overlap cue produced the facilitation effect when the SOA
was 150 ms. In contrast, the non-overlap cue did not produce
significant facilitation for the same SOA condition. These re-
sults suggest that the temporal overlap of the cue was necessary
in producing the facilitation effect. Importantly, the attentional
capture effect of the temporal property of the cue was depend-
ent on the cue-target temporal relationship (overlap or non-
overlap) rather than on the cue duration per se, as shown in
Experiment 2. Overall, in terms of the cue duration effect on
facilitation, the results in this study were congruent with the
results reported in Maruff et al. (1999) and Collie et al. (2000)
and incongruent with the results of Berger et al. (1999).
One explanation for the facilitation observed only in the
overlap cue condition was that the overlap cue could capture
attention more strongly than the non-overlap cue. This atten-
tional account was well documented in the previous studies,
although it is still possible to argue that sensory (energy) sum-
mation was partly responsible for the present results (Tassinari
& Berlucchi, 1992; Wright & Richard, 2003). Although it is not
easy to dismiss this possibility, we do not think that sensory
summation was responsible for the present results because the
cue and the target used in this study were not close enough to
produce sensory summation and they were sufficiently different
in their shapes. In this connection, Collie et al. (2000) examined
in their Experiment 2 whether the facilitation effect spread from
the cued placeholder at 18˚ to the nearby placeholder at 9˚.
They used four placeholders that were arranged horizontally
symmetrically across fixation point and the target was pre-
sented at one of these four placeholders. If it was due to energy
summation, the facilitation effect should have been found to a
restricted area around the cued location and would not have
spread to wider area. Contrarily to this expectation, when the
cue was presented at 18˚, the facilitation effect was found not
only at the cued location but also at the nearby location (i.e., the
placeholder at 9˚) as well. This wider spread of the facilitation
effect could not be accounted for by sensory summation. Thus
it seems that the facilitation effect arose by some attentional
process rather than as a peripheral sensory effect.
The second aim of this study was to shed light on the rela-
tionship between IOR and attentional mechanism. There were
four findings that suggested discrepancies in the effect of spa-
tial cueing between the facilitation effect and IOR. First, IOR
were observed with the 50 or 100 ms cue duration in the 450
and 800 ms SOA, while the facilitation effect did not observed
in the 150 ms SOA. In contrast, when the cue duration was
longer (i.e., 200 or 300 ms), the facilitation effect and IOR were
observed. These results indicated that temporal property of the
cue affected only the facilitation effect, but not IOR. Second,
there was no significant correlation between these two atten-
tional effects in both the overlap and the non-overlap cue con-
ditions. Third, the magnitude of IOR was equivalent irrespec-
tive of the cue durations. In Experiments 1 and 2, the facilita-
tion effect was limited to the overlap cue condition, while
comparable IORs were found for the overlap and non-overlap
cue condition. If the facilitation effect and IOR were two as-
pects of the same attentional mechanism, when the non-overlap
cue was not strong enough to drive the facilitation effect, it
would not be observed as well with the result that the magni-
tude of IOR. Contrary to this expectation, IORs were observed
both cue condition and did not differ from each other. Forth,
individuals who showed larger facilitation did not show larger
IOR either in the non-overlap cue condition or in the overlap
cue condition. Overall, the results indicated that these two at-
tentional phenomena were driven by two separate mechanisms.
In some cases, IOR is thought to be an indicator of previous
location of attentional orienting. It is somewhat harder to obtain
904

Y. MATSUDA, S. IWASAKI
the facilitation effect as it is a fragile and short-lived phenome-
non. In contrast, IOR is much more robust and long-lived phe-
nomenon caused by the exogenous cue. Therefore, if the facili-
tation effect and IOR were driven by same mechanism, IOR
might be used as a better indicator of the location of attention.
However, if these two phenomena reflect distinct attentional
mechanisms, it is not appropriate to use IOR as a sure indicator
of previous location of attentional orienting. Thus, it is impor-
tant to ascertain whether the facilitation effect and IOR were
controlled by one and the same attentional mechanism or not.
The results in this study added further evidence for the inde-
pendence of these two phenomena that reflected the automatic
control of attention. The results in this study support the notion
that the facilitation effect and IOR are influenced by separate
factors (both stimulus properties and participants’ traits) and
presumably are controlled by different attentional mechanisms
at least in the spatial cueing method. It follows that IOR cannot
be regarded as an indicator of attentional capture.
Acknowledgements
The study was partially supported by The Grants-in-Aid for
Scientific Research (No. 24530908) to the second author.
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