Individual Differences Research www.idr-journal.com 2009, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 119-141 ISSN: 1541-745X © 2009 Individual Differences Association, Inc. 119 Differentiating General and Peripheral Alerting Effects During Visual Orienting Tasks Raymond D. Collings*, Anthony J. Nelson, Shirleen M. McClarren, and Katharine L. Campi State University of New York College at Cortland *Raymond D. Collings; Department of Psychology; State University of New York College at Cortland; Cortland, NY 13045 raymond.collings@cortland.edu (email). ABSTRACT - Posner’s exogenous Visual Orienting Task (VOT) was administered to a normative sample of 44 undergraduate participants to examine specific alerting and spatial effects of visual cues. The current findings revealed the presence of two distinct alerting effects: an initial general alerting effect and a later-occurring peripheral alerting effect, specifically benefiting responses to invalidly cued targets. A small but significant inhibition of return (IOR) effect on bilaterally cued targets was also found (p < .05). A series of correlational analyses revealed that the specific peripheral alerting effect was most highly correlated with individual differences in self-report measures of inattention. These findings have both theoretical and methodological implications for attention and individual difference researchers. Over the last several decades, an enormous volume of research has focused on identifying the specific neurocognitive processes involved in visual orienting. Posner and Petersen’s (1990) model of a posterior orienting system continues to provide a useful framework for examining the automatic processes involved in reorienting visual attention from one spatial location to another. However, the emerging picture of these orienting processes is a complex system of facilitatory and inhibitory processes, one that is much more dynamic than earlier models indicated. This paper examines alerting processes involved in visual orienting, and the role these processes play during the performance of Posner’s exogenous visual orienting task (VOT;