Shaping Attention With Reward

Abstract

The contribution of rewarded actions to automatic attentional selection remains obscure. We hypothesized that some forms of automatic orienting, such as object-based selection, can be completely abandoned in favor of a reward-maximizing strategy. In the two experiments reported here, we presented identical visual stimuli to observers while manipulating what was being rewarded (targets in different locations from the cue or in random object locations) and the type of reward received (money or points). We found that reward alone, not the objects, guides attentional selection and thus entirely predicts behavior. These results suggest that guidance of selective attention, although automatic, is flexible and can be adjusted in accordance with external nonsensory reward-based factors.