Abstract
It is well known that reward- and self-associated stimuli bias attention. It is also known that self- associated stimuli are valued more highly than stimuli associated with another person. Here, we compared the strength of attentional biases toward stimuli associated with reward for oneself or another person. In an initial training phase, pairs of participants in adjacent rooms searched for a red, green, or blue target circle in a display of six uniquely colored circles and identified which side of the target a dot was located on. Each target color was associated with either reward for oneself, reward for the other participant, or no reward. In a subsequent test phase, participants completed a similar task in which they searched for a unique shape in a display of six differently colored shapes. Each trial contained a critical distractor that could be presented in one of the target colors from the training phase or a different color. The unique shape was never red, green, or blue, and no reward was given. In the training phase, participants were faster and more accurate at responding to the self-rewarded target color. In the test phase, participants were slower when the critical distractor was presented in both the previously self-rewarded target color and the unrewarded target color compared to the other-rewarded target color. However, the results for the unrewarded target color were likely due to a speed-accuracy trade-off. Collectively, these results suggest that self-rewarded information is prioritized over information indicating reward for another person.