title: Monetary reward increases attentional effort in the flanker task.
abstract: An important question is whether monetary reward can increase attentional effort in order to improve performance. Up to now, evidence for a positive answer is weak. Therefore, in the present study, the flanker task was used to examine this question further. Participants had to respond sooner than a certain deadline in a flanker task. One group of participants received a performance-contingent monetary reward, whereas the other group earned a fixed amount of money. As a result, monetary reward significantly improved performance in comparison with the control group. The analysis of speed-accuracy trade-off functions revealed that monetary reward increased attentional effort, leading to an enhanced quality of stimulus coding. Little evidence was found that reward also improved selective spatial attention.
authors.affiliation: Universität Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany. ronald.huebner@uni-konstanz.de
authors.forename: Ronald
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hübner
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schlösser
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D030141:Feedback, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D011930:Reaction Time; D012201:Reward; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult