Value-driven attentional capture

TLDR

Attention selects sensory input and prioritizes stimuli voluntarily or involuntarily, yet it is unclear whether high‑value but contextually irrelevant items can capture attention through reward learning. The study aims to use value‑driven attentional capture as a model for exploring cognitive control failures in disorders where stimulus value conflicts with goals, such as addiction and obesity. We found that a previously rewarded, task‑irrelevant item slows visual search, indicating that value‑associated neutral stimuli capture attention strongly and persistently, with susceptibility linked to working‑memory capacity and trait impulsivity.

Abstract

Attention selects which aspects of sensory input are brought to awareness. To promote survival and well-being, attention prioritizes stimuli both voluntarily, according to context-specific goals (e.g., searching for car keys), and involuntarily, through attentional capture driven by physical salience (e.g., looking toward a sudden noise). Valuable stimuli strongly modulate voluntary attention allocation, but there is little evidence that high-value but contextually irrelevant stimuli capture attention as a consequence of reward learning. Here we show that visual search for a salient target is slowed by the presence of an inconspicuous, task-irrelevant item that was previously associated with monetary reward during a brief training session. Thus, arbitrary and otherwise neutral stimuli imbued with value via associative learning capture attention powerfully and persistently during extinction, independently of goals and salience. Vulnerability to such value-driven attentional capture covaries across individuals with working memory capacity and trait impulsivity. This unique form of attentional capture may provide a useful model for investigating failures of cognitive control in clinical syndromes in which value assigned to stimuli conflicts with behavioral goals (e.g., addiction, obesity).