Motivation by reward jointly improves speed and accuracy, whereas task-relevance and meaningful images do not

Abstract

Visual selection is characterized by a trade-off between speed and accuracy. Speed or accuracy of the selection process can be affected by higher level factors—for example, expecting a reward, obtaining task-relevant information, or seeing an intrinsically relevant target. Recently, motivation by reward has been shown to simultaneously increase speed and accuracy, thus going beyond the speed–accuracy-trade-off. Here, we compared the motivating abilities of monetary reward, task-relevance, and image content to simultaneously increase speed and accuracy. We used a saccadic distraction task that required suppressing a distractor and selecting a target. Across different blocks successful target selection was followed either by (i) a monetary reward, (ii) obtaining task-relevant information, or (iii) seeing the face of a famous person. Each block additionally contained the same number of irrelevant trials lacking these consequences, and participants were informed about the upcoming trial type. We found that postsaccadic vision of a face affected neither speed nor accuracy, suggesting that image content does not affect visual selection via motivational mechanisms. Task relevance increased speed but decreased selection accuracy, an observation compatible with a classical speed–accuracy trade-off. Motivation by reward, however, simultaneously increased response speed and accuracy. Saccades in all conditions deviated away from the distractor, suggesting that the distractor was suppressed, and this deviation was strongest in the reward block. Drift-diffusion modelling revealed that task-relevance affected behavior by affecting decision thresholds, whereas motivation by reward additionally increased the rate of information uptake. The present findings thus show that the three consequences differ in their motivational abilities.

Computational mechanism underlying switching of motor actions

“…3C, two sample t-test analysis, p < 0.001). One potential explanation is that participants became less motivated when they were prompted to switch their reaching movements from a high- to low-reward targets, since motivation is correlated with expected reward [18, 19]. To assess whether the longer SRT is due to the reduction of the expected reward, we recruited 6 participants to perform a modified version of the switch task.…”

Suboptimal decision making and interpersonal problems in ADHD: longitudinal evidence from a laboratory task

“…This supports delay aversion being described as expressing negative affectivity 48 —typically associated with higher levels of anxiety and/or depression 51 . Longer reflection times have also been found to be associated with lower motivation to do tasks as instructed 52 , which higher conduct problems can reflect via non-compliance with external expectations. However, including the CGT parameters that correlated with social problems and the problem scores of conduct behavior and anxiety/depression in the same regression models, showed that none of them specifically predicted higher conduct or anxiety/depression problems.…”