The modulation of reward priority by top-down knowledge

Abstract

Reward-associated features capture attention automatically and continue to do so even when the reward contingencies are removed. This profile has led to the hypothesis that rewards belong to a separate class of attentional biases that is neither typically top-down nor bottom-up. The goal of these experiments was to understand the degree to which top-down knowledge can modulate value-driven attentional capture within (a) the timecourse of a single trial and (b) when the reward contingencies change explicitly over trials. The results suggested that top-down knowledge does not affect the size of value-driven attentional capture within a single trial. There were clear top-down modulations in the magnitude of value-driven capture when reward contingencies explicitly changed, but the original reward associations continued to have a persistent bias on attention. These results contribute to a growing body of evidence that reward associations bias attention through mechanisms separate from other top-down and bottom-up attentional biases.

Keywords:

• Attention
• Reward
• Attentional capture
• Top-down
• Selection history

We would like to thank Jane Raymond for her conversations related to this work. We would also like to thank Kassandra Miller, and Kyle Pugher for their help in data collection. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation [BCS-1230377-0].

We would like to thank Jane Raymond for her conversations related to this work. We would also like to thank Kassandra Miller, and Kyle Pugher for their help in data collection. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation [BCS-1230377-0].