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. 2011;6(11):e27926.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0027926. Epub 2011 Nov 21.

Learned value magnifies salience-based attentional capture

Brian A Anderson  1 , Patryk A Laurent, Steven Yantis
Affiliations

Learned value magnifies salience-based attentional capture

Brian A Anderson et al. PLoS One. 2011.

Abstract

Visual attention is captured by physically salient stimuli (termed salience-based attentional capture), and by otherwise task-irrelevant stimuli that contain goal-related features (termed contingent attentional capture). Recently, we reported that physically nonsalient stimuli associated with value through reward learning also capture attention involuntarily (Anderson, Laurent, & Yantis, PNAS, 2011). Although it is known that physical salience and goal-relatedness both influence attentional priority, it is unknown whether or how attentional capture by a salient stimulus is modulated by its associated value. Here we show that a physically salient, task-irrelevant distractor previously associated with a large reward slows visual search more than an equally salient distractor previously associated with a smaller reward. This magnification of salience-based attentional capture by learned value extinguishes over several hundred trials. These findings reveal a broad influence of learned value on involuntary attentional capture.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Behavioral Task.
Sequence of events and time course for a trial during training (a) and at test (b) in Experiment 1.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Behavioral Results for the Training Phase of Experiment 1.
Mean response time ± within-subjects s.e.m. for high- and low-reward targets over the course of the training phase. Only the main effect of trial block was significant [F(9,153) = 4.92, p<.001, ηp 2 = .224].
Figure 3
Figure 3. Behavioral Results for the Test Phase of Experiment 1.
Mean response time ± within-subjects s.e.m. for each distractor condition over the course of the test phase. The difference in RT on trials containing a high-value vs. a low-value distractor represents the effect of learned value on salience-driven attentional capture.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Behavioral Results for the Test Phase of Experiment 2.
Mean response time ± within-subjects s.e.m. for each distractor condition over the course of the test phase.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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