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Related Experiment Video

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VisualEyes: A Modular Software System for Oculomotor Experimentation

VisualEyes: A Modular Software System for Oculomotor Experimentation

Published on: March 25, 2011

Exogenous visual orienting by reward.

Michel F Failing¹, Jan Theeuwes

¹VU University, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Journal of Vision

|May 14, 2014

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Reward-associated cues capture spatial attention, even without being salient. This study shows that learning to associate a cue with reward influences attentional orienting, demonstrating a new pathway for attention capture.

Keywords:

attentional capture attentional orienting exogenous cueing reward learning

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Psychology

Background:

Spatial cueing experiments traditionally show salient cues capture attention.
Performance benefits/costs occur with valid/invalid cue locations.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if nonsalient cues associated with reward can capture spatial attention.
To demonstrate attentional orienting towards reward-associated nonsalient cues.

Main Methods:

Utilized a spatial cueing paradigm.
Incorporated reward learning to assign value to nonsalient cues.
Measured performance costs and benefits in attentional orienting.

Main Results:

Nonsalient cues acquiring value through reward learning captured spatial attention.
Demonstrated performance costs and benefits in attentional orienting.
Attentional capture occurred independently of task-set, goals, and salience.

Conclusions:

Stimuli associated with reward can exogenously capture spatial attention.
Reward learning provides a mechanism for attention capture independent of salience.
Findings challenge traditional views on the drivers of exogenous attention.