Reward prospect interacts with trial-by-trial preparation for potential distraction

Abstract

When attending for impending visual stimuli, cognitive systems prepare to identify relevant information while ignoring irrelevant, potentially distracting input. Recent work (Marini et al., 2013) showed that a supramodal distracter-filtering mechanism is invoked in blocked designs involving expectation of possible distracter stimuli, although this entails a cost (distraction-filtering cost) on speeded performance when distracters are expected but not presented. Here we used an arrow-flanker task to study whether an analogous cost, potentially reflecting the recruitment of a specific distraction-filtering mechanism, occurs dynamically when potential distraction is cued trial-to-trial (cued distracter-expectation cost). In order to promote the maximal utilization of cue information by participants, in some experimental conditions the cue also signaled the possibility of earning a monetary reward for fast and accurate performance. This design also allowed us to investigate the interplay between anticipation for distracters and anticipation of reward, which is known to engender attentional preparation. Only in reward contexts did participants show a cued distracter-expectation cost, which was larger with higher reward prospect and when anticipation for both distracters and reward were manipulated trial-to-trial. Thus, these results indicate that reward prospect interacts with the distracter expectation during trial-by-trial preparatory processes for potential distraction. These findings highlight how reward guides cue-driven attentional preparation.

Orchestrating Proactive and Reactive Mechanisms for Filtering Distracting Information: Brain-Behavior Relationships Revealed by a Mixed-Design fMRI Study

“…However, the conflict cost was larger in the 20% Inc block than in the 60% Inc block (interaction Block type by Trial type: F (1,19) ϭ 30.16, p ϭ 10 Ϫ4 ). The latter result is consistent with the proportion congruent effect seen in previous studies (Lowe and Mitterer, 1982;Jacoby et al, 2003;Bugg and Crump, 2012;Grandjean et al, 2012;Klein et al, 2014).…”

“…The distracting arrows could be congruent or incongruent in orientation relative to the central target arrow. Visual stimuli were programmed using MATLAB R2013a (MathWorks) with Psychtoolbox 3.0 (Kleiner et al, 2007). Stimuli were presented for 200 ms in black on a mediumgray background.…”

“…For the localizer run and the visual region-ofinterest (ROI) analyses, a mask was applied to exclude voxels outside the occipital lobe. The occipital lobe mask was created on the MNI 2 mm template with the WFU Pickatlas (Maldjian et al, 2003) and then transposed into the single-subject lower-resolution fMRI anatomical space.…”

Age differences in gain- and loss-motivated attention

“…However, the failure of alerting and the presence of incentives to reduce interference is consistent with previous studies using the ANT and the Eriksen-flanker task (e.g. Callejas et al, 2005;Fan et al, 2002;Marini, van den Berg, & Woldorff, 2015;Seifert et al, 2006). As suggested by Marini et al (2015), this might have to do with the similarity of the target and distractor arrows used for the Eriksen-flanker.…”

“…Callejas et al, 2005;Fan et al, 2002;Marini, van den Berg, & Woldorff, 2015;Seifert et al, 2006). As suggested by Marini et al (2015), this might have to do with the similarity of the target and distractor arrows used for the Eriksen-flanker. Specifically, because the target and distractors share the same visual properties, the phasic NE filtering mechanism may have been diminished by the lack of a salient property distinguishing the target from distractors, limiting more local effects of incentives on target processing.…”