Learned Value Magnifies Salience-Based Attentional Capture

Brian A Anderson, Patryk A Laurent and Steven Yantis

PLOS ONE, 2011, vol. 6, issue 11, 1-6

Abstract: Visual attention is captured by physically salient stimuli (termed salience-based attentional capture), and by otherwise task-irrelevant stimuli that contain goal-related features (termed contingent attentional capture). Recently, we reported that physically nonsalient stimuli associated with value through reward learning also capture attention involuntarily (Anderson, Laurent, & Yantis, PNAS, 2011). Although it is known that physical salience and goal-relatedness both influence attentional priority, it is unknown whether or how attentional capture by a salient stimulus is modulated by its associated value. Here we show that a physically salient, task-irrelevant distractor previously associated with a large reward slows visual search more than an equally salient distractor previously associated with a smaller reward. This magnification of salience-based attentional capture by learned value extinguishes over several hundred trials. These findings reveal a broad influence of learned value on involuntary attentional capture.

Date: 2011
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0027926

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0027926

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