Motor inhibition of return can affect prepared reaching movements

Inhibition of return (IOR) is a widely studied phenomenon that is thought to affect attention, eye movements, or reaching movements, in order to promote orienting responses toward novel stimuli. Previous research in our laboratory demonstrated that the motor form of saccadic IOR can arise from late-stage response execution processes. In the present study, we were interested in whether the same is true of reaching responses. If IOR can emerge from processes operating at or around the time of response execution, then IOR should be observed even when participants have fully prepared their responses in advance of the movement initiation signal. Similar to the saccadic system, our results reveal that IOR can be implemented as a late-stage execution bias in the reaching control system.

► Previous work suggests IOR results from sensory/attentional or motor programming processes. ► We show that motor IOR affecting reaching can arise from response execution processes. ► Our result confirms that motor IOR can be observed outside of the oculomotor system.