Reward and attention Sha & Jiang 1

Recent research reported that task-irrelevant colors captured attention if these colors previously served as search targets and received high monetary reward. Here we showed that both monetary reward and value-independent mechanisms influenced selective attention. Participants searched for two potential target colors among distractor colors in the training phase. Subsequently they searched for a shape singleton in a testing phase. Experiment 1 found that participants were slower in the testing phase if a distractor with the previous target colors was present rather than absent. Such slowing was observed even when no monetary reward was used during training. Experiment 2 introduced monetary reward to the target colors during the training phase. Participants were faster finding the target associated with higher monetary reward. However, reward training did not yield value-dependent attentional capture in the testing phase. Attentional capture by the previous target colors was not significantly greater for the previously high-reward color than the previously low or no-reward color. These findings revealed both the power and limitations of monetary reward on attention. Although monetary reward can increase attentional priority for the high-reward target during training, subsequent attentional capture effects may reflect, in part, attentional capture by previous targets.