Garre-Frutos Francisco, Lupiáñez Juan, Vadillo Miguel A
Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 Jul 16. doi: 10.3758/s13423-025-02734-1.
Value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC) refers to a process by which a priori neutral stimuli gain attentional priority when associated with reward, independently of goal or stimulus-driven attentional control. Although VMAC is considered an automatic and implicit process, the role of awareness of the stimulus-reward contingency on its learning process remains unclear at best. In a well-powered replication of a previous study, we found that VMAC is absent when participants are not explicitly informed about the stimulus-reward contingency in the pre-task instructions. In a second experiment, we show that when instructions are manipulated between groups, only the instructed group shows VMAC. Interestingly, although the no-instruction group did not show VMAC at the group level, participants who became aware of the stimulus-reward contingencies did nevertheless show robust VMAC at the end of the task. Meta-analytic evidence further supports our conclusion by showing that studies that include instructions about the stimulus-reward contingencies yield significantly larger VMAC effects. Taken collectively, these findings suggest that the learning process behind VMAC may not be entirely implicit.
价值调制注意捕获（VMAC）是指一种过程，通过该过程，先验中性刺激在与奖励相关联时获得注意优先权，而独立于目标或刺激驱动的注意控制。尽管VMAC被认为是一个自动且隐含的过程，但刺激-奖励偶然性意识在其学习过程中的作用充其量仍不明确。在对先前一项研究进行的有力重复实验中，我们发现，当参与者在任务前的指导中未被明确告知刺激-奖励偶然性时，VMAC不存在。在第二个实验中，我们表明，当在不同组之间操纵指导语时，只有接受指导的组表现出VMAC。有趣的是，尽管无指导组在组水平上未表现出VMAC，但在任务结束时，意识到刺激-奖励偶然性的参与者确实表现出了强烈的VMAC。荟萃分析证据通过表明包含有关刺激-奖励偶然性指导语的研究产生显著更大的VMAC效应，进一步支持了我们的结论。总体而言，这些发现表明VMAC背后的学习过程可能并非完全是隐含的。
