The reduced distractibility to the low-valued and non-rewarding stimuli underlies the neural development of value-based attention

Abstract

Reward plays a crucial role in supporting the selective processing of sensory information. Past studies in human adults have shown that rewarding stimuli could automatically capture attention even when they are behaviorally irrelevant and unactionable. While neural mechanisms underlying value-driven attention have been investigated in adulthood, it is still unclear how the human brain develops to support value-driven attention. Here, we tested if value-driven attention observed in adulthood is caused by the increase in attentional capture effects induced by the high-valued stimuli or by the reduction in distractibility to the low-valued stimuli throughout development. Here, we measured EEG from typically developing adolescents (15-17 years old) and healthy adults performing a value-driven attention task (22-33 years old). Consistent with previous reports, high-valued distractors worsen behavioral performance compared to the low-valued-distractor and no-distractor conditions. This behavioral interference is accompanied by the reduction in the N2pc amplitude, the event-related potential known to index target selection processes. Interestingly, we observed the comparable degrees of behavioral interference induced by the high-valued distractors and the corresponding reduction in the N2pc amplitude between adolescents and adults. That said, low-valued and non-rewarding distractors produced much higher attentional capture effects in teenagers compared to adults at both behavioral and neural levels. Together, our findings suggest that the value-driven attention effects observed in adulthood are due to the reduced distractibility of the attentional system to low-valued and non-rewarding visual stimuli later in development.