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Don’t let it distract you: how information about the availability of reward affects attentional selection
Previous research has shown that attentional selection is affected by reward contingencies: previously selected and rewarded stimuli continue to capture attention even if the reward contingencies are no longer in place. In the current study, we investigated whether attentional selection also is affe...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer US
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28733838 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-017-1376-8 |
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author | Failing, Michel Theeuwes, Jan |
author_facet | Failing, Michel Theeuwes, Jan |
author_sort | Failing, Michel |
collection | PubMed |
description | Previous research has shown that attentional selection is affected by reward contingencies: previously selected and rewarded stimuli continue to capture attention even if the reward contingencies are no longer in place. In the current study, we investigated whether attentional selection also is affected by stimuli that merely signal the magnitude of reward available on a given trial but, crucially, have never had instrumental value. In a series of experiments, we show that a stimulus signaling high reward availability captures attention even when that stimulus is and was never physically salient or part of the task set, and selecting it is harmful for obtaining reward. Our results suggest that irrelevant reward-signaling stimuli capture attention, because participants have learned about the relationship between the stimulus and reward. Importantly, we only observed learning after initial attentional prioritization of the reward signaling stimulus. We conclude that nonsalient, task-irrelevant but reward-signaling stimuli can affect attentional selection above and beyond top-down or bottom-up attentional control, however, only after such stimuli were initially prioritized for selection. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13414-017-1376-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5662709 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-56627092017-11-15 Don’t let it distract you: how information about the availability of reward affects attentional selection Failing, Michel Theeuwes, Jan Atten Percept Psychophys Article Previous research has shown that attentional selection is affected by reward contingencies: previously selected and rewarded stimuli continue to capture attention even if the reward contingencies are no longer in place. In the current study, we investigated whether attentional selection also is affected by stimuli that merely signal the magnitude of reward available on a given trial but, crucially, have never had instrumental value. In a series of experiments, we show that a stimulus signaling high reward availability captures attention even when that stimulus is and was never physically salient or part of the task set, and selecting it is harmful for obtaining reward. Our results suggest that irrelevant reward-signaling stimuli capture attention, because participants have learned about the relationship between the stimulus and reward. Importantly, we only observed learning after initial attentional prioritization of the reward signaling stimulus. We conclude that nonsalient, task-irrelevant but reward-signaling stimuli can affect attentional selection above and beyond top-down or bottom-up attentional control, however, only after such stimuli were initially prioritized for selection. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13414-017-1376-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Springer US 2017-07-21 2017 /pmc/articles/PMC5662709/ /pubmed/28733838 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-017-1376-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
spellingShingle | Article Failing, Michel Theeuwes, Jan Don’t let it distract you: how information about the availability of reward affects attentional selection |
title | Don’t let it distract you: how information about the availability of reward affects attentional selection |
title_full | Don’t let it distract you: how information about the availability of reward affects attentional selection |
title_fullStr | Don’t let it distract you: how information about the availability of reward affects attentional selection |
title_full_unstemmed | Don’t let it distract you: how information about the availability of reward affects attentional selection |
title_short | Don’t let it distract you: how information about the availability of reward affects attentional selection |
title_sort | don’t let it distract you: how information about the availability of reward affects attentional selection |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28733838 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-017-1376-8 |
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