title: 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.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales.
authors.forename: Mike E
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5145-5502
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Le Pelley
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-1903-4019
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pearson
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales.
authors.forename: Oren
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9833-9998
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Griffiths
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales.
authors.forename: Tom
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-2836-2743
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Beesley
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D000066553:Problem Behavior; D011930:Reaction Time; D012201:Reward; D012438:Saccades; D012945:Social Values; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult