Hoofs Vincent, Carsten Thomas, Boehler C Nico, Krebs Ruth M
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium.
Psychol Res. 2019 Feb;83(1):13-25. doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-0975-x. Epub 2018 Jan 10.
Environmental stimuli can provoke specific response tendencies depending on their incentive valence. While some studies report positive-approach and negative-avoidance biases, others find no such mappings. To further illuminate the relationship between incentive valence and action requirement, we combined a cued monetary incentive paradigm with an approach/avoidance joystick task. Incentive type was manipulated between groups: The reward group won money, while the punishment group avoided losing money for correct and fast responses to targets following incentive cues. Depending on their orientations, targets had to be 'approached' or 'avoided'. Importantly, incentive valence (signaled by cue color) was orthogonal to action requirement (target orientation). Moreover, targets could carry valence-associated information or not (target color), which was, however, task-irrelevant. First, we observed that both valence cues (reward/punishment) improved performance compared to neutral cues, independent of the required action (approach/avoid), suggesting that advance valence cues do not necessarily produce specific action biases. Second, task-irrelevant valence associations with targets promoted action biases, with valence-associated targets facilitating approach and impairing avoid responses. Importantly, this approach bias for valence-associated targets was observed in both groups and hence occurred independently of absolute valence ('unsigned'). This rather unexpected finding might be related to the absence of a direct contrast between positive valence and negative valence within groups and the common goal to respond fast and accurately in all incentive trials. Together, our results seem to challenge the notion that monetary incentives trigger 'hard-wired' valence-action biases in that specific design choices seem to modulate the presence and/or direction of valence-action biases.
环境刺激可以根据其激励效价引发特定的反应倾向。虽然一些研究报告了积极趋近和消极回避偏差，但另一些研究则未发现此类对应关系。为了进一步阐明激励效价与行动要求之间的关系，我们将一个线索化货币激励范式与一个趋近/回避操纵杆任务相结合。激励类型在组间进行了操纵：奖励组赢钱，而惩罚组在根据激励线索对目标做出正确且快速的反应时避免输钱。根据其方向，目标必须被“趋近”或“回避”。重要的是，激励效价（由线索颜色表示）与行动要求（目标方向）是正交的。此外，目标可能携带与效价相关的信息，也可能不携带（目标颜色），然而这与任务无关。首先，我们观察到与中性线索相比，两种效价线索（奖励/惩罚）都提高了表现，与所需行动（趋近/回避）无关，这表明预先的效价线索不一定会产生特定的行动偏差。其次，与目标的任务无关的效价关联促进了行动偏差，与效价相关的目标促进了趋近反应并损害了回避反应。重要的是，在两组中都观察到了对与效价相关目标的这种趋近偏差，因此它独立于绝对效价（“无符号”）而出现。这一相当意外的发现可能与组内正效价和负效价之间缺乏直接对比以及在所有激励试验中快速准确反应的共同目标有关。总之，我们的结果似乎对货币激励会引发“固定的”效价 - 行动偏差这一观点提出了挑战，因为特定的设计选择似乎会调节效价 - 行动偏差的存在和/或方向。
