Valuable orientations capture attention

Abstract

Visual attention has long been known to be drawn to stimuli that are physically salient or congruent with task-specific goals. Several recent studies have shown that attention is also captured by stimuli that are neither salient nor task relevant, but that are rendered in a colour that has previously been associated with reward. We investigated whether another feature dimension—orientation—can be associated with reward via learning and thereby elicit value-driven attentional capture. In a training phase, participants received a monetary reward for identifying the colour of Gabor patches exhibiting one of two target orientations. A subsequent test phase in which no reward was delivered required participants to search for Gabor patches exhibiting one of two spatial frequencies (orientation was now irrelevant to the task). Previously rewarded orientations robustly captured attention. We conclude that reward learning can imbue features other than colour—in this case, specific orientations—with persistent value.

Keywords:

• Attentional capture
• Reward learning
• Orientation
• Gabor patch

PAL is now at Brain Corporation, San Diego, CA. MGH is now at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. PAL, BAA, and SY conceived of the experiment concept. All authors contributed to the design of the experiment. PAL and MGH collected the data. PAL and BAA analysed the data. All authors contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript.

We are grateful to Emma Wampler for technical assistance.

This work was funded by NIH [grant number R01-DA013165] to Steven Yantis and fellowship [grant number F31-DA033754] to Brian A. Anderson.

PAL is now at Brain Corporation, San Diego, CA. MGH is now at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. PAL, BAA, and SY conceived of the experiment concept. All authors contributed to the design of the experiment. PAL and MGH collected the data. PAL and BAA analysed the data. All authors contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript.

We are grateful to Emma Wampler for technical assistance.

This work was funded by NIH [grant number R01-DA013165] to Steven Yantis and fellowship [grant number F31-DA033754] to Brian A. Anderson.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by NIH [grant number R01-DA013165] to Steven Yantis and fellowship [grant number F31-DA033754] to Brian A. Anderson.