When goals conflict with values: Counterproductive attentional and oculomotor capture by reward-related stimuli.

Abstract

Attention provides the gateway to cognition, by selecting certain stimuli for further analysis. Recent research demonstrates that whether a stimulus captures attention is not determined solely by its physical properties, but is malleable, being influenced by our previous experience of rewards obtained by attending to that stimulus. Here we show that this influence of reward learning on attention extends to task-irrelevant stimuli. In a visual search task, certain stimuli signaled the magnitude of available reward, but reward delivery was not contingent on responding to those stimuli. Indeed, any attentional capture by these critical distractor stimuli led to a reduction in the reward obtained. Nevertheless, distractors signaling large reward produced greater attentional and oculomotor capture than those signaling small reward. This counterproductive capture by task-irrelevant stimuli is important because it demonstrates how external reward structures can produce patterns of behavior that conflict with task demands, and similar processes may underlie problematic behavior directed toward real-world rewards.

Automaticity and cognitive control in the learned predictiveness effect.

“…Similar effects have been reported previously whereby low value items are easier to discount as distractors compared to salient high value stimuli (Anderson et al, 2001;Della Libera & Chelazzi, 2009;Le Pelley et al, 2015). Certainly, this effect could also be interpreted in line with the idea that salient predictive distractors are causing more interference.…”

“…Subsequent work has replicated this basic effect under a number of conditions (Anderson et al, 2011b;Hickey, Chelazzi, & Theeuwes, 2010a;2011;Le Pelley, Pearson, Griffiths, & Beesley, 2015).…”

“…This is perhaps unsurprising given that the training employed here is far shorter than other demonstrations of automatised stimulus processing with experience (e.g., Anderson et al, 2011aAnderson et al, , 2011bAnderson et al, , 2012Le Pelley et al, 2015;Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977).…”

Perceptual Competition Promotes Suppression of Reward Salience in Behavioral Selection and Neural Representation

“…Examining the channel-based signal change at the neuronal population level improves the signalto-noise ratio compared with voxel-level analysis. Second, the suppression of the reward-associated orientation might, at the same time, decrease the response of the neurons that were tuned to that orientation and increase the response of the neurons that were tuned to other orientations (Martinez-Trujillo and Treue, 2004). These response changes may cancel each other out and lead to negligible overall changes at the voxel level.…”

“…This learned predictiveness of reward was suggested to increase salience and upgrade its selection priority even when it was competing with a task-related and physically salient object (Hickey et al, 2010;Anderson et al, 2011a;Le Pelley et al, 2015). The evidence for the enhanced representation of reward-associated stimuli was found in both visual cortices (Serences, 2008) and dopaminergic midbrain areas .…”