Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a bias against returning the attention to a previously attended location. As a foraging facilitator\nit is thought to facilitate systematic visual search. With respect to neutral stimuli, this is generally thought to be adaptive, but\nwhen threatening stimuli appear in our environment, such a bias may be maladaptive. This experiment investigated the influence\nof phobia-related stimuli on the IOR effect using a discrimination task. A sample of 50 students (25 high, 25 low in spider fear)\ncompleted an IOR task including schematic representations of spiders or butterflies as targets. Eye movements were recorded and\nto assess discrimination among targets, participants indicated with button presses if targets were spiders or butterflies. Reaction\ntime data did not reveal a significant IOR effect but a significant interaction of group and target; spider fearful participants were\nfaster to respond to spider targets than to butterflies. Furthermore, eye-tracking data showed a robust IOR effect independent of\nstimulus category.These results offer a more comprehensive assessment of the motor and oculomotor factors involved in the IOR\neffect.
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