Response-selection conflict contributes to inhibition of return.

Here we examined the relationship between inhibition of return (IOR) and response-selection conflict. In two go/no-go and spatial-cueing experiments, we measured the amplitude of the fronto-central N2 event-related potential component to estimate the degree of response-selection conflict for validly cued and invalidly cued targets. When the probability of a go target was high (Experiment 1), both the amplitude of the N2 elicited on no-go trials and the number of false alarm errors were greater on invalid-cue than on valid-cue trials. When the probability of a go target was low (Experiment 2), neither of these effects was observed and the magnitude of the IOR effect was greatly reduced. These results show that a relative response bias toward responding on invalid-cue trials contributes to the IOR reaction time effect when the required response is prepotent.