Abstract
Attentional control has traditionally been categorized into exogenous (bottom-up) and endogenous (top-down) processes. However, a number of studies have demonstrated that attentional selection can also be controlled by past rewarding experiences. While previous studies suggest that exogenous and endogenous factors interact with each other, less is known about how reward-based selection is integrated within an attentional priority map. In this study, we addressed the question whether reward outcomes modulate voluntary controls of attention observed in endogenous cueing effects. In two experiments, we manipulated the association between cue validity (i.e., valid/invalid) and the magnitude of reward (i.e., high/low) in endogenous spatial cueing tasks. In the congruent condition, trials in the valid condition were followed by a high reward and those in the invalid condition were followed by a low reward. In the incongruent condition, those mappings of cue validity and reward were reversed and participants were given a low reward following valid trials and received a high reward following invalid trials. Experiment 1 showed that the validity effect (i.e., reaction time difference subtracting the valid condition from the invalid condition) in congruent trials was significantly larger than that in incongruent trials. In Experiment 2, we further tested whether the modulation of endogenous attentional cueing effects observed in Experiment 1 reflected the difference in motivations due to the difference in the expected value between congruent and incongruent trials. The results in Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 even when both congruent and the incongruent trials have the same expected value, suggesting that not expected values, but reward outcomes affect observers’ strategic control of attentional deployment. Together, these findings indicate that a rewarding experience modulates endogenous attentional cueing effects.
Acknowledgement: Grant No. 16J04500 from the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) program of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science