Abstract
Existing research indicates that learning about the Pavlovian ‘signal value’ of stimuli can induce attentional biases: findings suggest that our attentional system prioritises detection of stimuli that have previously signalled availability of high reward. These findings potentially provide a human analogue of sign-tracking behaviour previously reported in studies of non-human animals. Here we examine a visual search task that has been developed to demonstrate the Pavlovian influence of reward on attention, in which the critical reward-signalling stimuli are never explicit targets of search. This procedure has previously yielded robust effects of reward on attention; however it remains unclear whether this pattern reflects a persistent and automatic bias in attentional capture based on prior experience of stimulus–reward pairings, or whether it results from participants strategically attending to reward-signalling distractors because they provide useful information about reward magnitude. To investigate this issue, in the current study participants initially completed a rewarded visual search task, in which colours of distractor stimuli signalled availability of high or low reward. Participants then completed a test phase in which rewards were no longer available, such that distractor colours no longer provided useful information on reward availability. Performance during the initial rewarded phase was impaired by the presence of a distractor signalling availability of high relative to low reward. Crucially, the magnitude of this reward-related distraction effect did not reduce in the subsequent unrewarded test phase. This suggests that participants’ experience of differences in reward value signalled by distractor stimuli in this task can induce persistent biases in the extent to which these stimuli involuntarily capture attention, even when they are entirely task-irrelevant.
Highlights
Attention refers to the set of cognitive mechanisms that prioritize certain information for further analysis or action
If the distractor circle appeared in the highreward colour this signalled that the current trial was a bonus trial on which reward would be multiplied by a factor of 10; if the distractor was in the low-reward colour the current trial was not a bonus trial
These findings suggest that learning about the value of the reward that is signalled by a stimulus can change the likelihood that it captures attention in future [14,15,16,17,18,19], a phenomenon termed value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC)
Summary
Attention refers to the set of cognitive mechanisms that prioritize certain information for further analysis or action. The implication is that the high-reward distractor was more likely to capture participants’ attention, interfering with (and slowing) search for the target–even though this behaviour was counterproductive because it meant participants earned less on high-reward trials than would otherwise have been the case. In other words, these findings suggest that learning about the value of the reward that is signalled by a stimulus can change the likelihood that it captures attention in future [14,15,16,17,18,19], a phenomenon termed value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC)
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