Abstract (eng)
Inhibition of return (IOR) has been suggested to be a hallmark of involuntary attentional capture by highly salient non-predictive peripheral cues. While many studies have found IOR after onset cues, experimental results regarding IOR after color singleton cues have been mixed. The examination conducted for this thesis was aimed at answering the question, whether in those studies that did not find IOR after color singleton cues, peculiarities of the experimental procedure have been responsible for the absence. In a first experiment a variation of the spatial cueing paradigm was used to replicate the finding of an absence of IOR after color singletons in a discrimination task based on keypress responses (Gibson & Amelio, 2000). After successful replication the same procedure and stimulus material was used, to test whether a change to the presumably more IOR sensitive saccadic response mode and a detection task would unveil otherwise hidden IOR. This was not the case. Possible explanations for this finding as well as limitations of the experiments are discussed. Finally implications for the debate about the influence of attention on early visual processing are pointed out and suggestions for future studies are made.