Reward Encourages Reactive, Goal-Directed Suppression of Attention

• Main Authors: Pearson, D. (Author), Pelley, M.E.L (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Psychological Association 2021
• Subjects: attention; Attention; attentional capture; distractor suppression; Goals; human; Humans; motivation; Motivation; reaction time; Reaction Time; reward; Reward; reward learning
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Stimuli that signal large reward have an increased likelihood of capturing attention and gaze relative to stimuli that signal small or no reward, even when capture counterproductively prevents reward delivery. These findings suggest that a stimulus’s signaling relationship with reward (the contingency between stimulus presentation and reward delivery) is a potent influence on selective attention. Recent studies have also implicated a stimulus’s response relationship with reward (the contingency between orienting to a stimulus and reward delivery) in reducing capture by signals of reward. Here we show that this response pathway modulates capture by encouraging a reactive, goal-directed distractor suppression process. In a rewarded visual search task, participants demonstrated an oculomotor preference away from a distractor that had a negative response relationship with high reward (looking at the distractor caused reward omission) and toward a distractor that had no such negative response relationship, providing evidence for the role of the response relationship in suppressing capture by reward-related distractors. Analysis of the temporal dynamics of eye movements suggests that this distractor suppression process operates via a reactive mechanism of rapid disengagement (Experiment 1). Consistent with a goaldirected mechanism, the influence of the response relationship was eliminated when reward was unavailable (Experiment 2). These findings highlight the multifaceted role of stimulus–reward relationships in attentional selection © 2021 American Psychological Association