Pitchford Brent, Arnell Karen M
Department of Psychology, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Ave, St. Catharines, ON, L2S 3A1, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.
Psychol Res. 2025 May 29;89(3):105. doi: 10.1007/s00426-025-02135-y.
Rewarded stimuli are prioritized by the attentional system. Behavioral performance is improved when the task-relevant dimension is tied to a potential reward but is impaired when the irrelevant dimension is reward related. Within the rewarded Stroop task, the facilitation (reward responsiveness) and impairment (modulation of interference of reward association; MIRA) from reward-associated stimuli are thought to be due to different cognitive processes. In four experiments, we explored whether reward responsiveness and MIRA were influenced by reward magnitude and persisted following reward discontinuation. We manipulated how informed participants were of the stimulus-reward contingency based on whether they received stimulus-reward color instructions and whether or not the stimulus-reward contingency was certain (i.e., one color was always tied to one reward outcome). Results suggest that greater reward magnitude increased reward responsiveness, especially when participants were informed about the stimulus-reward contingency. However, greater impairment (MIRA) by a large versus small reward related color word was only observed when participants had little knowledge of the reward contingency (i.e., no instructions and a more uncertain mapping of stimuli to rewards) or during the extinction phase when reward associated colors were less relevant. These findings highlight the distinction between reward responsiveness to maximize gains and the unintentional prioritization of related but irrelevant information and suggest that reward associations that elicit greater reward responsiveness do not necessarily lead to greater impairment of conflict processing.
奖赏刺激会被注意力系统优先处理。当与任务相关的维度与潜在奖赏相关联时，行为表现会得到改善，但当不相关维度与奖赏相关时，行为表现则会受到损害。在奖赏性斯特鲁普任务中，与奖赏相关的刺激所产生的促进作用（奖赏反应性）和损害作用（奖赏关联干扰的调节；MIRA）被认为是由于不同的认知过程所致。在四项实验中，我们探究了奖赏反应性和MIRA是否受奖赏大小的影响，以及在奖赏停止后是否依然存在。我们根据参与者是否收到刺激-奖赏颜色指示以及刺激-奖赏的关联性是否确定（即一种颜色总是与一种奖赏结果相关联）来操纵参与者对刺激-奖赏关联性的了解程度。结果表明，更大的奖赏大小会增强奖赏反应性，尤其是当参与者了解刺激-奖赏关联性时。然而，只有当参与者对奖赏关联性了解甚少（即没有指示且刺激与奖赏的映射关系更不确定）时，或者在奖赏关联颜色不太相关的消退阶段，才会观察到与大奖赏相关的颜色词比与小奖赏相关的颜色词产生更大的损害作用（MIRA）。这些发现凸显了为最大化收益而产生的奖赏反应性与对相关但不相关信息的无意优先处理之间的区别，并表明引发更大奖赏反应性并不一定会导致冲突处理受到更大损害。
