Rewarding outcomes enhance attentional capture and delay attentional disengagement

Abstract

Attentional capture and disengagement are distinct process involved in attentional orienting. Most current studies have examined either the process of attentional capture or disengagement by manipulating stimuli associated with either positive (gains) or negative outcomes (losses). However, few studies have investigated whether attentional capture and disengagement are modulated by reward and loss outcomes. In the current study, we want to examine whether positive or negative outcomes could modulate distinguishing process of attentional capture and disengagement. Here, we manipulated different colored singleton stimuli associated with reward or loss outcomes; these stimuli were either presented at the center of screen or at the peripheral location. The participants' task was to search the target and identify the orientation of line segment in target as quickly as possible. The results showed that people had difficulty disengaging from a central reward-distractor, in comparison to loss- and neutral-distractor when target was presented at peripheral location. Similarly, peripheral reward-distractor captured more attention than loss- and neutral-distractor when target was presented at the center of screen after central fixation disappeared. Through our discoveries, we can conclude that positive rewards can increase attentional capture and delay attentional disengagement in healthy people.

Keywords: Attentional capture; Attentional disengagement; Loss; Reward.

Figure 1. Illustration of the experimental procedure.

Sample trial sequences for the visual search. A gray diamond is target, participants’ task is to search target and judge the line segment within target as soon as quickly. If distractor was presented at central location and target was present at periphery, participants had to disengage attention from distractor and search target; if distractor was presented at peripheral location and target was presented at central location, participant need to had to central target. The distractor was imbued with different colours. The blue and orange distractor respectively signalled reward and loss and these colour-outcome relationships were counterbalanced between participants. Especially green distractor and no-distractor signalled neutral outcomes.

Figure 2. Experiment results.

(A) The response time is shown as a function of type of target location (centre, periphery) and value type (rewards, losses, neutral and no-distractor). Each participant’s data points are superimposed. (B) Response accuracy. Error bars represent within-subject standard errors of the mean (*p < .05, ***p < .001).