Abstract
Although executive functions (e.g., response inhibition) are often thought to interact consciously with reward, recent studies have demonstrated that they can also be triggered by unconscious stimuli. Further research has suggested a close relationship between consciously and unconsciously triggered response inhibition. To date, however, the effect of reward on unconsciously triggered response inhibition has not been explored. To address this issue, participants in this study performed runs of a modified Go/No-Go task during which they were exposed to both high and low value monetary rewards presented both supraliminally and subliminally. Participants were informed that they would earn the reward displayed if they responded correctly to each trial of the run. According to the results, when rewards were presented supraliminally, a greater unconsciously triggered response inhibition was observed for high-value rewards than for low-value rewards. In contrast, when rewards were presented subliminally, no enhanced unconsciously triggered response inhibition was observed. Results revealed that supraliminal and subliminal rewards have distinct effects on unconsciously triggered response inhibition. These findings have important implications for extending our understanding of the relationship between reward and response inhibition.
Highlights
A considerable amount of research has demonstrated that people invest an increased amount of effort in tasks when rewards are at stake, regardless of whether such rewards are consciously perceived [1,2,3]
Traditional views hold that high-level cognitive control functions require attention and consciousness [11,12]
Reward and prime visibility test In the forced-choice test measuring monetary reward visibility, participants perceived 98.9% (SD = 0.02) of rewards when presented supraliminally, indicating that participants could perceive the value of the reward
Summary
A considerable amount of research has demonstrated that people invest an increased amount of effort in tasks when rewards are at stake, regardless of whether such rewards are consciously perceived [1,2,3]. There is ongoing debate as to whether supraliminal and subliminal reward information influence executive functions in similar ways. Several studies have shown that both supraliminal and subliminal reward information have similar effects on executive functions with high-value rewards enhancing task performance [4,5,6]. In the reward-priming task, participants were supraliminally or subliminally exposed to a low-value or high-value reward they could earn by performing well on a modified Go/No-Go task. Through this approach, we sought to investigate how performance-contingent supraliminal and subliminal reward information influence unconsciously triggered response inhibition. We hypothesized that high-value rewards would not significantly boost task performance when presented subliminally
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