Bergmann Nils, Koch Dennis, Schubö Anna
Cognitive Neuroscience of Perception and Action, Department of Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
J Vis. 2019 Mar 1;19(3):10. doi: 10.1167/19.3.10.
Modulations of visual attention due to expectation of reward were frequently reported in recent years. Recent studies revealed that reward can modulate the implicit learning of repeated context configurations (e.g., Tseng & Lleras, 2013). We investigated the influence of reward expectations on context learning by associating colors to different reward magnitudes. Participants searched through contexts consisting of spatially distributed L-shaped distractors and a T-shaped target, with half of these objects appearing in a color associated with low, medium, or high reward. Half of these context configurations were repeatedly presented in every experimental block, whereas the other half was generated newly for every trial. Results showed an earlier and more pronounced contextual cueing effect in contexts associated with high reward compared with low reward contexts. This was visible as faster decline of response times to targets in repeated contexts associated with high reward compared with repeated low reward and novel contexts, and was reflected in the eye movement pattern as shorter distance of the first fixation to the target location. These results suggest that expectation of high reward magnitude facilitates subsequent learning of repeated context configurations. High reward also increases the efficiency of attention guidance toward the target location.
近年来，因对奖励的预期而导致的视觉注意力调节现象屡有报道。近期研究表明，奖励能够调节对重复情境配置的内隐学习（例如，曾 & 耶拉斯，2013年）。我们通过将颜色与不同奖励幅度相关联，研究了奖励预期对情境学习的影响。参与者在由空间分布的L形干扰物和T形目标组成的情境中进行搜索，其中一半的物体以与低、中或高奖励相关的颜色出现。在每个实验块中，这些情境配置的一半会重复呈现，而另一半则在每次试验时重新生成。结果显示，与低奖励情境相比，高奖励情境下的情境线索效应出现得更早且更明显。这表现为与高奖励相关的重复情境中对目标的反应时间下降速度比重复低奖励情境和新情境更快，并且在眼动模式中体现为首次注视到目标位置的距离更短。这些结果表明，对高奖励幅度的预期有助于后续对重复情境配置的学习。高奖励还提高了对目标位置的注意力引导效率。
