Reward does not modulate the preview benefit in visual search

ABSTRACT

Preview benefit refers to faster search for a target when a subset of distractors is seen prior to the search display. We investigated whether reward modulates this effect. Participants identified a target among non-targets on each trial. On “preview” trials, placeholders occupied half the search array positions prior to the onset of the full array. On “non-preview” trials, no placeholders preceded the full search array. On preview trials, the target could appear at either a placeholder position (old-target-location condition) or a position where no placeholder had been (new-target-location condition). Critically, the colour of the stimulus array indicated whether participants would earn reward for a correct response. We found a typical preview benefit, but no evidence that reward modulated this effect, despite a manipulation check showing that stimuli in the reward-signaling colour tended to capture attention on catch trials. The results suggest that reward learning does not modulate the preview benefit.

KEYWORDS:

• Preview benefit
• reward
• spatial attention
• visual search

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/ambwq/.