Abstract
It has long been known that the control of attention in visual search depends both on voluntary, top-down deployment according to context-specific goals, and on involuntary, stimulus-driven capture based on the physical conspicuity of perceptual objects. Recent evidence suggests that pairing target stimuli with reward can modulate the voluntary deployment of attention, but there is little evidence that reward modulates the involuntary deployment of attention to task-irrelevant distractors. We report several experiments that investigate the role of reward learning on attentional control. Each experiment involved a training phase and a test phase. In the training phase, different colors were associated with different amounts of monetary reward. In the test phase, color was not task-relevant and participants searched for a shape singleton; in most experiments no reward was delivered in the test phase. We first show that attentional capture by physically salient distractors is magnified by a previous association with reward. In subsequent experiments we demonstrate that physically inconspicuous stimuli previously associated with reward capture attention persistently during extinction—even several days after training. Furthermore, vulnerability to attentional capture by high-value stimuli is negatively correlated across individuals with working memory capacity and positively correlated with trait impulsivity. An analysis of intertrial effects reveals that value-driven attentional capture is spatially specific. Finally, when reward is delivered at test contingent on the task-relevant shape feature, recent reward history modulates value-driven attentional capture by the irrelevant color feature. The influence of learned value on attention may provide a useful model of clinical syndromes characterized by similar failures of cognitive control, including addiction, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and obesity.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anderson, B. A., & Folk, C. L. (2010). Variations in the magnitude of attentional capture: Testing a two-process model. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 72, 342–352.
Anderson, B. A., Laurent, P. A., & Yantis, S. (2011a). Value-driven attentional capture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U S A, 108, 10367–10371.
Anderson, B. A., Laurent, P. A., & Yantis, S. (2011b). Learned value magnifies salience-based attentional capture. PLoS One, 6(11), e27926.
Anderson, B. A., Laurent, P. A., & Yantis, S. (2012). Generalization of value-based attentional priority. Visual Cognition, 20, 647–658.
Belopolsky, A. V., Schreij, D., & Theeuwes, J. (2010). What is top-down about contingent capture? Attention, Perception, &Psychophysics, 72, 326–341.
Berridge, K. C., Robinson, T. E. (1998). What is the role of dopamine in reward: Hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience? Brain Research Reviews, 28, 309–369.
Bisley, J. W., & Goldberg, M. E. (2010). Attention, intention, and priority in the parietal lobe. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 33, 1–21.
Braver, T. S., Cole, M. W.,& Yarkoni, T. (2010). Vive les differences! Individual variation in neural mechanisms of executive control. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 20, 242–250.
Bundesen, C. (1990). A theory of visual attention. Psychological Review, 97, 523–547.
Bush, G. (2010). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and attention networks. Neuropsychopharmacology, 35, 278–300.
Christ, S. E., & Abrams, R. A. (2006). Abrupt onsets cannot be ignored. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 875–880.
Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G.L. (2002). Control of goal-directed and stimulus driven attention in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3, 201–215.
Davis, C. (2010). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: associations with overeating and obesity. Current Psychiatry Reports, 12, 389–395.
Della Libera, C., & Chelazzi, L. (2006). Visual selective attention and the effects of monetary reward. Psychological Science, 17, 222–227.
Della Libera, C., & Chelazzi, L. (2009). Learning to attend and to ignore is a matter of gains and losses. Psychological Science, 20, 778–784.
Dickman, S. J., & Meyer, D. E. (1988) Impulsivity and speed-accuracy tradeoffs in information processing. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 54, 274–290.
Duncan, J., Ward, R., & Shapiro, K. (1994). Direct measurement of attentional dwell time in human vision. Nature, 369, 313–315.
Egeth, H. E., &Yantis, S. (1997). Visual attention: Control, representation, and time course. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 269–297.
Eriksen, B. A., & Eriksen, C. W. (1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception & Psychophysics, 16, 143–149.
Everitt, B. J., Dickinson, A., & Robbins, T. W. (2001).The neuropsychological basis of addictive behaviour. Brain Research Reviews, 36, 129–138.
Field, M., & Cox, W. M. (2008). Attentional bias in addictive behaviors: A review of its development, causes, and consequences. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 97, 1–20.
Folk, C. L., & Remington, R. W. (1998). Selectivity in distraction by irrelevant featural singletons: Evidence for two forms of attentional capture. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 24, 847–858.
Folk, C.L., Remington, R. W., & Johnston, J. C. (1992). Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 18, 1030–1044.
Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., Wu, S. C. (2009). Additivity of abrupt onset effects supports nonspatial distraction, not the capture of spatial attention. Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 71, 308–313.
Fukuda, K., & Vogel, E. K. (2009). Human variation in overriding attentional capture. Journal of Neuroscience, 29, 8726–8733.
Fukuda, K., & Vogel, E. K. (2011). Individual differences in recovery time from attentional capture. Psychological Science, 22, 361–368.
Garavan, H., & Hester, R. (2007). The role of cognitive control in cocaine dependence. Neuropsychological Review, 17, 337–345.
Groman, S. M., James, A. S., Jentsch, J. D. (2008). Poor response inhibition: at the nexus between substance abuse and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 33, 690–698.
Hickey, C., Chelazzi, L., & Theeuwes, J. (2010a). Reward changes salience in human vision via the anterior cingulate. Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 11096–11103.
Hickey, C., Chelazzi, L., & Theeuwes, J. (2010b). Reward guides vision when it’s your thing: Trait reward-seeking in reward-mediated visual priming. PLOS One, 5, e14087.
Hollerman J. R., Tremblay L., Schultz W. (1998). Influence of reward expectation on behavior-related neuronal activity in primate striatum. Journal of Neurophysiology, 80, 947–963.
Itti, L., & Koch, C. (2001). Computational modelling of visual attention. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 194–203.
Koob, G. F., & Le Moal, M. (1997). Drug abuse: Hedonic homeostatic dysregulation. Science, 278, 52–58.
Krebs, R. M., Boehler, C. N., & Woldorff, M. G. (2010). The influence of reward associations on conflict processing in the Stroop task. Cognition, 117, 341–347.
Kyllingsbaek, S., Schneider, W. X., & Bundesen, C. (2001). Automatic attraction of attention to former targets in visual displays of letters. Perception & Psychophysics, 63, 85–98.
Lien, M.-C., Ruthruff, E., & Johnston, J. V. (2010). Attentional capture with rapidly changing attentional control settings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 36, 1–16.
Lin, J. Y., Murray, S. O., & Boynton, G. M. (2009). Capture of attention to threatening stimuli without perceptual awareness. Current Biology, 19, 1118–1122.
Moran, J., & Desimone, R. (1985). Selective attention gates visual processing in the extrastriate cortex. Science, 229, 782–784.
McClure, S. M., Berns, G. S., & Montague, P. R. (2003). Temporal prediction errors in a passive learning task activate human striatum. Neuron, 38, 339–346.
Navalpakkam, V., Koch, C., Rangel, A., & Perona, P. (2010). Optimal reward harvesting in complex perceptual environments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U S A, 107, 5232–5237.
O’Doherty, J. P., Dayan, P., Friston, K., Critchley, H., & Dolan, R. J. (2003). Temporal difference models and reward-related learning in the human brain. Neuron, 38, 329–337.
Parkhurst, D., Law, K., & Niebur, E. (2002). Modeling the role of salience in the allocation of overt visual attention. Vision Research, 42, 107–123.
Pashler, H. (Ed.). (1998). Attention. London: Psychology Press.
Patton, J. H., Stanford, M. S., & Barratt, E. S. (1995). Factor structure of the barratt impulsiveness scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51, 768–774.
Peck, C. J., Jangraw, D. C., Suzuki, M., Efem, R., & Gottlieb, J. (2009). Reward modulates attention independently of action value in posterior parietal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 29, 11182–11191.
Pessoa, L., & Engelmann, J. B. (2010). Embedding reward signals into perception and cognition. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 4(17).doi: 10.3389/fnins.2010.00017
Platt, M. L., & Glimcher, P. W. (1999). Neural correlates of decision variables in parietal cortex. Nature, 400, 233–238.
Raymond, J. E., & O’Brien, J. L. (2009). Selective visual attention and motivation: The consequences of value learning in an attentional blink task. Psychological Science, 20, 981–988.
Rescorla, R. A. (1999). Partial reinforcement reduces the associative change produced by nonreinforcement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 25, 403–414.
Robinson, T. E., & Berridge, K. C. (2003). Addiction. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 25–53.
Robinson, T. E., & Berridge, K. C. (2008). The incentive sensitization theory of addiction: some current issues. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B Biological Sciences, 363, 3137–3146.
Schultz, W., Dayan, P., and Montague, P. R. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science, 275, 1593–1599.
Serences, J. T. (2008). Value-based modulations in human visual cortex. Neuron, 60, 1169–1181.
Serences, J. T., & Saproo, S. (2010). Population response profiles in early visual cortex are biased in favor of more valuable stimuli. Journal of Neurophysiology, 104, 76–87.
Sheppard, B., Chavira, D., Azzam, A., Grados, M. A., Umaña, P., Garrido, P., & Mathews, C. A. (2010). ADHD prevalence and association with hoarding behaviors in childhood onset OCD. Depression & Anxiety, 27, 667–674.
Shiffrin, R. M., & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing II: Perceptual learning, automatic attending, and general theory. Psychological Review, 84, 127–190.
Shuler, M. G., & Bear, M. F. (2006). Reward timing in the primary visual cortex. Science, 311, 1606–1609.
Simen, P., Contreras, D., Buck, C., Hu, P., Holmes, P.,& Cohen, J.D. (2009). Reward rate optimization in two-alternative decision making: empirical tests of theoretical predictions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 35, 1865–1897.
Sugrue, L. P., Corrado, G. S., & Newsome, W. T. (2005). Choosing the greater of two goods: neural currencies for valuation and decision making. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 363–375.
Sutton, R. S., & Barto, A. G. (1998).Reinforcement learning: An introduction. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Theeuwes, J. (1992). Perceptual selectivity for color and form. Perception & Psychophysics, 51, 599–606.
Theeuwes, J. (2010). Top-down and bottom-up control of visual selection. Acta Psychologica, 135, 77–99.
Theeuwes, J., & Godijn, R. (2002). Irrelevant singletons capture attention: Evidence from inhibition of return. Perception & Psychophysics, 64, 764–770.
Yantis, S. (1993).Stimulus-driven attentional capture. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2, 156–161.
Yantis, S. (2000). Goal-directed and stimulus-driven determinants of attentional control. In S. Monsell, & J. Driver (Eds.), Attention and performance (Vol. 18, pp. 73–103). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Yantis, S. (2008). Neural basis of selective attention: Cortical sources and targets of attentional modulation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 86–90.
Yantis, S., & Hillstrom, A. P. (1994). Stimulus-driven attentional capture: Evidence from equiluminant visual objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 20, 95–107.
Yantis, S., & Jonides, J. (1984). Abrupt visual onsets and selective attention: Evidence from visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 10, 350–374.
Yantis, S., & Jonides, J. (1990). Abrupt visual onsets and selective attention: Voluntary versus automatic allocation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 16, 121–134.
Acknowledgements
We thank H. Egeth, J. Flombaum, L. Gmeindl, P. Holland, D. E. Meyer, and J. Serences for fruitful discussions and suggestions. The experiments reported here were supported by US National Institutes of Health grant R01-DA013165 to S.Y.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Yantis, S., Anderson, B., Wampler, E., Laurent, P. (2012). Reward and Attentional Control in Visual Search. In: Dodd, M., Flowers, J. (eds) The Influence of Attention, Learning, and Motivation on Visual Search. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4794-8_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4794-8_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-4793-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-4794-8
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)