Reward favors the prepared: Incentive and task-informative cues interact to enhance attentional control.

Abstract

The dual mechanisms of control account suggests that cognitive control may be implemented through relatively proactive mechanisms in anticipation of stimulus onset, or through reactive mechanisms, triggered in response to changing stimulus demands. Reward incentives and task-informative cues (signaling the presence/absence of upcoming cognitive demand) have both been found to influence cognitive control in a proactive or preparatory fashion; yet, it is currently unclear whether and how such cue effects interact. We investigated this in two experiments using an adapted flanker paradigm, where task-informative and reward incentive cues were orthogonally manipulated on a trial-by-trial basis. In Experiment 1, results indicated that incentives not only speed RTs, but specifically reduce both interference and facilitation effects when combined with task-informative cues, suggesting enhanced proactive attentional control. Experiment 2 manipulated the timing of incentive cue information, demonstrating that such proactive control effects were only replicated with sufficient time to process the incentive cue (Early Incentive); when incentive signals were presented close to target onset (Late Incentive) the primary effect was a speed-accuracy tradeoff. Together, results suggest that advance cueing may trigger differing control strategies, and that these strategies may critically depend on both the timing – and the motivational incentive – to use such cues.

Reward Anticipation Dynamics during Cognitive Control and Episodic Encoding: Implications for Dopamine

“…On this timescale, DA neurons have been shown to exhibit gradually increasing (ramping) anticipatory activity, scaling with reward uncertainty (Fiorillo et al, 2003). Given prior argument that uncertainty serves to signal cognitive control demand (Mushtaq et al, 2011), we suggest that a similar ramping signal could have supported enhanced control, in response to task-informative cues, in Chiew and Braver (2016). Potential commonalities in cognitive control and memory effects following brief reward anticipation (corresponding to phasic DA) are less straightforward, but observed control performance (response speeding without enhanced control) and memory performance (enhanced consolidation-dependent memory scaling with expected reward value) dovetail with prior evidence for DA involvement in response speeding and episodic encoding.…”

“…Prolonged reward anticipation was associated both with enhanced control (Chiew and Braver, 2016) and with enhanced memory for incidental stimuli (Stanek et al, submitted); however, in both studies, these effects were specifically seen in interaction with other experimental factors. Chiew and Braver demonstrated that while interference was lower under prolonged vs. brief reward anticipation (Early vs. Late Incentive), a specific control benefit was observed in Early Incentive informed trials.…”

“…When a reward cue was presented <500 ms before target in Chiew and Braver (2016), response speeding was observed in incentive vs. non-incentive trials but interference did not decrease.This suggests that incentives did not enhance control under these conditions. When reward cue was presented <500 ms before incidental stimuli in Stanek et al (submitted), subsequent memory for those stimuli scaled with expected reward value (100% > 50% > 0% reward probability) but only post-consolidation (24-interval).…”

“… (A) Task design from Experiment 2 from Chiew and Braver (2016). Incentive and task-informative cues were manipulated on a trial-by-trial basis, while the two timing conditions (Early and Late Incentive) were blocked.…”

“…Some evidence suggests that DA modulates response speeding—decision thresholds during speeded response may be mediated by a DA-modulated cortico-basal ganglia network (Lo and Wang, 2006), and reward-related improvement in both accuracy and speed, “breaking” the speed-accuracy tradeoff, may be attributable to DA-based effort deployment (Manohar et al, 2015). However, Chiew and Braver (2016) used a strict time cutoff which may have prohibited reward-based “breaking the tradeoff”; additional evidence suggests that DA manipulations do not always alter speed-accuracy tradeoff (Winkel et al, 2012). Further, these investigations did not disentangle possible DA roles at different temporal dynamics.…”