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Updated: May 13, 2026
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Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments
Published on: January 23, 2017
Reward and attentional control in visual search
Steven Yantis1, Brian A Anderson, Emma K Wampler
1Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218-2686, USA. yantis@jhu.edu
Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation
|February 27, 2013
Summary
Learned reward associations enhance attentional capture by stimuli, even when irrelevant to the task. This effect persists over time and is linked to individual differences in working memory and impulsivity.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Attentional control involves both voluntary (goal-directed) and involuntary (stimulus-driven) mechanisms.
- Reward learning influences voluntary attention, but its impact on involuntary attention to distractors is less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how reward learning affects involuntary attentional capture by task-irrelevant stimuli.
- To determine the persistence and individual variability of value-driven attentional capture.
Main Methods:
- Participants underwent a training phase associating colors with monetary rewards.
- A test phase involved visual search for a shape singleton, with color as a task-irrelevant feature.
- Experiments examined attentional capture by previously rewarded colors, including during extinction and with varying working memory capacity and impulsivity.
Main Results:
- Previously rewarded distractors captured attention more strongly, even when physically inconspicuous.
- This value-driven attentional capture persisted for days and was spatially specific.
- Lower working memory capacity and higher impulsivity correlated with increased vulnerability to capture by high-value stimuli.
Conclusions:
- Learned value significantly modulates involuntary attention, extending beyond simple stimulus salience.
- This finding has implications for understanding cognitive control deficits in conditions like addiction and ADHD.
- Value-driven attentional capture offers a model for studying failures of cognitive control.
