Kang Guanlan, Luo Xiaoxiao, Chen Lihan, Chen Jialiang, Chen Jiahan, Dai Hengsen, Zhou Xiaolin
School of Psychology, Laboratory of Sports Stress and Adaptation of General Administration of Sport, Beijing Sport University, Beijing, China.
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China.
Psychol Res. 2024 Mar;88(2):404-416. doi: 10.1007/s00426-023-01860-6. Epub 2023 Jul 27.
Reward motivates goal-directed behaviors, leading to faster reaction time (RT) and lower error rate in searching for a target in the reward condition than in the no-reward condition in target-discrimination tasks. However, it is unclear how reward influences target detection in which participants are required to judge whether a predesignated target is present or absent. Here, we asked participants to complete a target-detection search task in which the color of the search array indicated the reward availability of the current trial. Correct and faster (than a baseline) responses would be rewarded if the search array had the reward-related color. In Experiments 1A and 1B, the target was presented in 50% of the trials. Experiment 1B had the same design as Experiment 1A, except that different baselines were set for the target-present and target-absent conditions. In Experiment 2, the proportion of target presence was manipulated to be high (80%), moderate (50%), or low (20%) in different blocks of stimuli. Results showed that, across all the experiments, participants responded faster and made fewer errors in the reward than in the no-reward condition when the target was present. However, this facilitatory effect was reversed when the target was absent, showcasing a reward-induced interference. The signal detection analysis suggested that reward biased the report criterion to the "yes" response. These findings demonstrate that the impact of reward on goal-directed behavior can be detrimental and reward prolongs the search process by rendering participants reluctant to say "no" in visual search termination.
奖励激发目标导向行为，在目标辨别任务中，与无奖励条件相比，奖励条件下搜索目标时反应时间（RT）更快，错误率更低。然而，尚不清楚奖励如何影响目标检测，即要求参与者判断预先指定的目标是否存在的情况。在此，我们要求参与者完成一项目标检测搜索任务，其中搜索阵列的颜色表明当前试验的奖励可用性。如果搜索阵列具有与奖励相关的颜色，正确且更快（比基线）的反应将得到奖励。在实验1A和1B中，50%的试验呈现目标。实验1B与实验1A设计相同，只是为目标存在和目标不存在条件设置了不同的基线。在实验2中，在不同的刺激块中，目标出现的比例被操纵为高（80%）、中（50%）或低（20%）。结果表明，在所有实验中，当目标存在时，与无奖励条件相比，参与者在奖励条件下反应更快，错误更少。然而，当目标不存在时，这种促进作用会逆转，显示出奖励诱导的干扰。信号检测分析表明，奖励使报告标准偏向于“是”反应。这些发现表明，奖励对目标导向行为的影响可能是有害的，并且奖励会使参与者在视觉搜索终止时不愿说“否”，从而延长搜索过程。
