Texas A&M Institute for Neuroscience, Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 Jul;74(7):1257-1263. doi: 10.1177/1747021821990033. Epub 2021 Feb 4.
Previously reward-associated stimuli have consistently been shown to involuntarily capture attention in the visual domain. Although previously reward-associated but currently task-irrelevant sounds have also been shown to interfere with visual processing, it remains unclear whether such stimuli can interfere with the processing of task-relevant auditory information. To address this question, we modified a dichotic listening task to measure interference from task-irrelevant but previously reward-associated sounds. In a training phase, participants were simultaneously presented with a spoken letter and number in different auditory streams and learned to associate the correct identification of each of three letters with high, low, and no monetary reward, respectively. In a subsequent test phase, participants were again presented with the same auditory stimuli but were instead instructed to report the number while ignoring spoken letters. In both the training and test phases, response time measures demonstrated that attention was biased in favour of the auditory stimulus associated with high value. Our findings demonstrate that attention can be biased towards learned reward cues in the auditory domain, interfering with goal-directed auditory processing.
先前的研究表明，与奖励相关的刺激会在视觉领域自动吸引注意力。尽管先前与奖励相关但目前与任务无关的声音也被证明会干扰视觉处理，但尚不清楚这种刺激是否会干扰与任务相关的听觉信息的处理。为了解决这个问题，我们修改了双耳分听任务来测量与任务无关但先前与奖励相关的声音的干扰。在训练阶段，参与者同时在不同的听觉流中听到一个单词和一个数字，并学习将每个三个字母中的正确识别分别与高、低和无货币奖励相关联。在随后的测试阶段，参与者再次听到相同的听觉刺激，但被指示在忽略听到的字母的情况下报告数字。在训练和测试阶段，反应时间测量都表明，注意力偏向于与高价值相关的听觉刺激。我们的发现表明，注意力可以偏向于听觉领域中学习到的奖励线索，从而干扰有目标的听觉处理。
