title: Rewards boost sustained attention through higher effort: A value-based decision making approach.
abstract: Maintaining sustained attention over time is an effortful process limited by finite cognitive resources. Recent theories describe the role of motivation in the allocation of such resources as a decision process: the costs of effortful performance are weighed against its gains. We examined this hypothesis by combining methods from attention research and decision neuroscience. Participants first performed a sustained attention task at different levels of reward. They then performed a reward-discounting task, measuring the subjective costs of performance. Results demonstrated that higher rewards led to improved performance (Exp 1-3), and enhanced attentional effort (i.e. pupil diameter; Exp 2 & 3). Moreover, discounting curves constructed from the choice task indicated that subjects devalued rewards that came at the cost of staying vigilant for a longer duration (Exp 1 & 2). Motivation can thus boost sustained attention through increased effort, while sustained performance is regarded as a cost against which rewards are discounted.
authors: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore.
authors: Stijn A A
authors: SA
authors: Massar
authors: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore.
authors: Julian
authors: J
authors: Lim
authors: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore.
authors: Karen
authors: K
authors: Sasmita
authors: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. Electronic address: michael.chee@duke-nus.edu.sg.
authors: Michael W L
authors: MW
authors: Chee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D012201:Reward; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Decision making; Effort-discounting; Pupillometry; Reward motivation; Sustained attention