Irrelevant learned reward associations disrupt voluntary spatial attention

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychology

Background:

• Attention can be guided by physical salience or learned reward associations.
• Voluntary attention is directed by current goals and expectations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if irrelevant reward associations disrupt goal-driven, voluntary attention.
• To examine the disruptive effects of value-driven attentional capture on spatial attention.

Main Methods:

• A letter-search task with cued and uncued trials was employed.
• A task-irrelevant color, previously associated with reward, was presented.
• Target identification accuracy was measured under different attentional guidance conditions.

Main Results:

• Voluntary attention improved target identification accuracy on cued trials.
• This benefit was reduced when a reward-associated color appeared in the uncued hemifield.
• A control experiment confirmed this effect was due to reward association, not the color itself.

Conclusions:

• Involuntary, value-driven attentional capture can disrupt voluntary control of spatial attention.
• Learned reward associations can override goal-directed attentional processes.