Inhibition of return and action affordances.

Previous work has shown that inhibition of return (IOR) operates on identity-specific object representations and does not spread to semantically related items (Morgan et al. in Eur J Cogn Psychol 17(4):499-520, 2005). The current study further examines the representations underlying IOR by investigating whether IOR is influenced by action-related properties of objects. An exogenous cue appeared on the side of an object that was either compatible or incompatible with the action afforded by the object. Then a target requiring a rapid key-press or reach localisation response appeared on the cued or uncued side. Responses were slower to cued versus uncued targets, but this IOR effect did not interact with action-compatibility. These results show that IOR does not appear to operate on visuomotor representations.