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Can Monetary Reward Modulate Social Attention?

Selective visual attention is a primary cognitive function, which allows the selection of the most relevant stimuli in the environment by prioritizing their processing. Several studies showed that this process can be influenced by both social signals, such as gaze direction (i.e., the Gaze Cueing Ef...

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Autores principales: Lo Gerfo, Emanuele, De Angelis, Jacopo, Vergallito, Alessandra, Bossi, Francesco, Romero Lauro, Leonor Josefina, Ricciardelli, Paola
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6246685/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30487771
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02213
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author Lo Gerfo, Emanuele
De Angelis, Jacopo
Vergallito, Alessandra
Bossi, Francesco
Romero Lauro, Leonor Josefina
Ricciardelli, Paola
author_facet Lo Gerfo, Emanuele
De Angelis, Jacopo
Vergallito, Alessandra
Bossi, Francesco
Romero Lauro, Leonor Josefina
Ricciardelli, Paola
author_sort Lo Gerfo, Emanuele
collection PubMed
description Selective visual attention is a primary cognitive function, which allows the selection of the most relevant stimuli in the environment by prioritizing their processing. Several studies showed that this process can be influenced by both social signals, such as gaze direction (i.e., the Gaze Cueing Effect, GCE) and by the motivational valence of gratifying stimuli, such as monetary rewards. The aim of this study was to explore whether GCE could be modulated by a monetary reward. To this end, we created an experiment in which participants performed a gaze cuing task before and after an implicit learning task aiming to induce an association between gaze direction and monetary reward (experimental condition), or after a perceptual task (control condition). Statistical analyses were conducted following both a frequentist and a Bayesian approach. Results supported previous findings showing the presence of the GCE, i.e., faster responses in congruent trials when the target appeared in the gazed-at location. Interestingly, our results did not reveal significant differences among the conditions. Therefore, contrary to what was reported by previous attentional orienting studies with non-social stimuli, monetary reward does not seem to be able to modulate (or interfere with) the orienting of attention mediated by gaze direction as measured by the GCE. Taken together our results suggest that social signals such as gaze direction have a greater impact than monetary reward in orienting selective attention.
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spelling pubmed-62466852018-11-28 Can Monetary Reward Modulate Social Attention? Lo Gerfo, Emanuele De Angelis, Jacopo Vergallito, Alessandra Bossi, Francesco Romero Lauro, Leonor Josefina Ricciardelli, Paola Front Psychol Psychology Selective visual attention is a primary cognitive function, which allows the selection of the most relevant stimuli in the environment by prioritizing their processing. Several studies showed that this process can be influenced by both social signals, such as gaze direction (i.e., the Gaze Cueing Effect, GCE) and by the motivational valence of gratifying stimuli, such as monetary rewards. The aim of this study was to explore whether GCE could be modulated by a monetary reward. To this end, we created an experiment in which participants performed a gaze cuing task before and after an implicit learning task aiming to induce an association between gaze direction and monetary reward (experimental condition), or after a perceptual task (control condition). Statistical analyses were conducted following both a frequentist and a Bayesian approach. Results supported previous findings showing the presence of the GCE, i.e., faster responses in congruent trials when the target appeared in the gazed-at location. Interestingly, our results did not reveal significant differences among the conditions. Therefore, contrary to what was reported by previous attentional orienting studies with non-social stimuli, monetary reward does not seem to be able to modulate (or interfere with) the orienting of attention mediated by gaze direction as measured by the GCE. Taken together our results suggest that social signals such as gaze direction have a greater impact than monetary reward in orienting selective attention. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-11-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6246685/ /pubmed/30487771 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02213 Text en Copyright © 2018 Lo Gerfo, De Angelis, Vergallito, Bossi, Romero Lauro and Ricciardelli. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Lo Gerfo, Emanuele
De Angelis, Jacopo
Vergallito, Alessandra
Bossi, Francesco
Romero Lauro, Leonor Josefina
Ricciardelli, Paola
Can Monetary Reward Modulate Social Attention?
title Can Monetary Reward Modulate Social Attention?
title_full Can Monetary Reward Modulate Social Attention?
title_fullStr Can Monetary Reward Modulate Social Attention?
title_full_unstemmed Can Monetary Reward Modulate Social Attention?
title_short Can Monetary Reward Modulate Social Attention?
title_sort can monetary reward modulate social attention?
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6246685/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30487771
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02213
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