Spatial working memory load impairs manual but not saccadic inhibition of return

Although spatial working memory has been shown to play a central role in manual IOR (Castel, Pratt, & Craik, 2003), it is so far unclear whether spatial working memory is involved in saccadic IOR. The present study sought to address this question by using a dual task paradigm, in which the participants performed an IOR task while keeping a set of locations in spatial working memory. While manual IOR was eliminated, saccadic IOR was not affected by spatial working memory load. These findings suggest that saccadic IOR does not rely on spatial working memory to process inhibitory tagging.

Research highlights
► We examined whether saccadic IOR depends on spatial-WM to keep inhibitory tagging.
► In contrast to manual IOR, saccadic IOR was unaffected by spatial-WM load.
► Suggested saccadic IOR do not rely on spatial-WM to keep inhibitory tagging.