title: Learned value magnifies salience-based attentional capture.
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.
authors: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America. bander33@jhu.edu
authors: Brian A
authors: BA
authors: Anderson
authors: Patryk A
authors: PA
authors: Laurent
authors: Steven
authors: S
authors: Yantis
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis