Reward speeds up and increases consistency of visual selective attention: a lifespan comparison

Incentive motivation improves numerosity discrimination in children and adolescents

We recently showed that incentive motivation improves the precision of the Approximate Number System (ANS) in young adults. To shed light on the development of incentive motivation, the present study investigated whether this effect and its underlying mechanisms may also be observed in younger samples. Specifically, seven-year-old children (n = 23; 12 girls) and 14-year-old adolescents (n = 30; 15 girls) performed a dot comparison task with monetary reward incentives. Both age groups showed higher accuracy in a reward compared to a neutral condition and, similarly, higher processing efficiency as revealed by the drift rate parameter of the EZ-diffusion model. Furthermore, in line with the Incentive Salience Hypothesis, phasic pupil dilations—indicating the activation of the brain’s salience network—were greater in incentivized trials in both age groups. Together these finding suggest that incentive modulation improves numerosity discrimination in children and adolescents by enhancing the perceptual saliency of numerosity information. However, the observed reward anticipation effects were less pronounced in children relative to adolescents. Furthermore, unlike previous findings regarding young adults, the decision thresholds of children and adolescents were not raised by the monetary reward, which may indicate a more protracted development of incentive regulation of response caution than perceptual evidence accumulation.

Rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value among older adults

OBJECTIVES

Previous studies using visual search paradigms have provided inconsistent results regarding rapid detection of emotional faces among older adults. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether the emotional significance of the faces contributes to efficient searches for emotional faces due to the possible confounding effects of visual saliency. We addressed this issue by excluding the influence of visual factors and examined older adults' ability to detect faces with emotional meaning.

METHOD

We used an associative learning procedure in which neutral faces were paired with monetary reward or punishment, such that the neutral faces acquired positive or negative emotional value. Older participants completed the associative learning task and then engaged in a visual search task, in which previously learned neutral faces were presented as discrepant faces among newly presented neutral distractor faces. Data of young adults from a previous study that used identical experimental procedures were also analyzed.

RESULTS

Older participants exhibited lower learning ability than young participants. However, older adults who were successful at learning were able to detect neutral faces associated with reward or punishment more rapidly than those without monetary outcomes, similar to the pattern observed for young adults.

DISCUSSION

The results suggest that acquired emotional value promotes the detection of value-associated neutral faces among older adults who succeed at learning. It is therefore possible that the ability to detect faces that evoke emotions is preserved in older adults.

Rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value

Swift detection of faces with emotional meaning underlies fruitful social relationships. Although previous studies using a visual search paradigm have demonstrated rapid detection of emotional facial expressions, whether it is attributable to emotional/motivational significance remains to be clarified. We examined this issue by excluding the influence of visual factors on the rapid detection of faces with emotional meaning. First, participants were engaged in an associative learning task wherein neutral faces were associated with either monetary rewards, monetary punishments, or zero outcome in order for the neutral faces to acquire positive, negative, and no emotional value, respectively. Then, during the visual search task, the participants detected a target-neutral face associated with high reward or punishment from among newly presented neutral faces. In Experiment 1, neutral faces associated with high reward and punishment values were more rapidly detected than those without monetary outcomes. In Experiment 2, highly rewarded and highly punished neutral faces were more rapidly detected than neutral faces associated with low monetary reward/punishment. Analyses of ratings confirmed that the learned neutral faces acquired emotional value, and the reaction times were negatively related to arousal ratings. These results suggest that the emotional/motivational significance promotes the rapid detection of emotional faces.

Developmental change in prefrontal cortex recruitment supports the emergence of value-guided memory

Prioritizing memory for valuable information can promote adaptive behavior across the lifespan, but it is unclear how the neurocognitive mechanisms that enable the selective acquisition of useful knowledge develop. Here, using a novel task coupled with functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined how children, adolescents, and adults (N = 90) learn from experience what information is likely to be rewarding, and modulate encoding and retrieval processes accordingly. We found that the ability to use learned value signals to selectively enhance memory for useful information strengthened throughout childhood and into adolescence. Encoding and retrieval of high- vs. low-value information was associated with increased activation in striatal and prefrontal regions implicated in value processing and cognitive control. Age-related increases in value-based lateral prefrontal cortex modulation mediated the relation between age and memory selectivity. Our findings demonstrate that developmental increases in the strategic engagement of the prefrontal cortex support the emergence of adaptive memory.

Seizing the opportunity: Lifespan differences in the effects of the opportunity cost of time on cognitive control

Previous work suggests that lifespan developmental differences in cognitive control reflect maturational and aging-related changes in prefrontal cortex functioning. However, complementary explanations exist: It could be that children and older adults differ from younger adults in how they balance the effort of engaging in control against its potential benefits. Here we test whether the degree of cognitive effort expenditure depends on the opportunity cost of time (average reward rate per unit time): if the average reward rate is high, participants should withhold cognitive effort whereas if it is low, they should invest more. In Experiment 1, we examine this hypothesis in children, adolescents, younger, and older adults, by applying a reward rate manipulation in two cognitive control tasks: a modified Erikson Flanker and a task-switching paradigm. We found that young adults and adolescents reflexively withheld effort when the opportunity cost of time was high, whereas older adults and, to a lesser degree children, invested more resources to accumulate reward as quickly as possible. We tentatively interpret these results in terms of age- and task-specific differences in the processing of the opportunity cost of time. We qualify our findings in a second experiment in younger adults in which we address an alternative explanation of our results and show that the observed age differences in effort expenditure may not result from differences in task difficulty. To conclude, we think that our results present an interesting first step at relating opportunity costs to motivational processes across the lifespan. We frame the implications of further work in this area within a recent developmental model of resource-rationality, which points to developmental sweet spots in cognitive control.

Target value and prevalence influence visual foraging in younger and older age

The prevalence and reward-value of targets have an influence on visual search. The strength of the effect of an item's reward-value on attentional selection varies substantially between individuals and is potentially sensitive to aging. We investigated individual and age differences in a hybrid foraging task, in which the prevalence and value of multiple target types was varied. Using optimal foraging theory measures, foraging was more efficient overall in younger than older observers. However, the influence of prevalence and value on target selections was similar across age groups, suggesting that the underlying cognitive mechanisms are preserved in older age. When prevalence was varied but target value was balanced, younger and older observers preferably selected the most frequent target type and were biased to select another instance of the previously selected target type. When value was varied, younger and older observers showed a tendency to select high-value targets, but preferences were more diverse between individuals. When value and prevalence were inversely related, some observers showed particularly strong preferences for high-valued target types, while others showed a preference for high-prevalent, albeit low-value, target types. In younger adults, individual differences in the selection choices correlated with a personality index, suggesting that avoiding selections of low-value targets may be related to reward-seeking behaviour.

Neurodevelopment of the incentive network facilitates motivated behaviour from adolescence to adulthood

The ability to enhance motivated performance through incentives is crucial to guide and ultimately optimise the outcome of goal-directed behaviour. It remains largely unclear how motivated behaviour and performance develops particularly across adolescence. Here, we used computational fMRI to assess how response speed and its underlying neural circuitry are modulated by reward and loss in a monetary incentive delay paradigm. We demonstrate that maturational fine-tuning of functional coupling within the cortico-striatal incentive circuitry from adolescence to adulthood facilitates the ability to enhance performance selectively for higher subjective values. Additionally, during feedback, we found developmental sex differences of striatal representations of reward prediction errors in an exploratory analysis. Our findings suggest that a reduced capacity to utilise subjective value for motivated behaviour in adolescence is rooted in immature information processing in the incentive system. This indicates that the neurocircuitry for coordination of incentivised, motivated cognitive control acts as a bottleneck for behavioural adjustments in adolescence.

Reward modulates the association between sensory noise and brain activity during perceptual decision-making

Perceptual decisions entail the accumulation of evidence until a decision criterion is reached. The amount of noise in this process is inversely related to the behavioral performance of the decision-maker. Hence, reducing the amount of perceived noise could improve performance in perceptual decisions. In this study, we investigated whether providing monetary reward for correct responses in a perceptual decision-making task would enhance performance based on prior research linking noise reduction to the administration of reward. To this end, thirty-one healthy young adults carried out an incentivized dot tracking task (iDT) during recording of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behavioral responses were fitted to a Bayesian version of the drift-diffusion model that, among other parameters, also includes an estimate of sensory noise. Fifty percent of the trials were incentivized to compare rewarded with unrewarded trials regarding behavior, brain responses and estimates of model parameters. In order to establish a link between the noise parameter and fMRI activity, we correlated percent signal change (PSC) values from nucleus accumbens and caudate nucleus with noise levels in rewarded and unrewarded trials respectively. Although reward did not affect behavioral performance and model parameters, the fMRI analyses showed notable differences in nucleus accumbens, caudate nucleus and rostral anterior cingulate cortex in rewarded relative to unrewarded trials. Furthermore, higher PSC within nucleus accumbens was significantly associated with lower sensory noise levels, which was specific to rewarded trials. This work is consistent with previous findings on reward modulation of brain responses and marks a first step towards elucidating the effects of reward-induced noise suppression during perceptual decision-making.

Strategic prioritisation enhances young and older adults' visual feature binding in working memory

Visual working memory for features and bindings is susceptible to age-related decline. Two experiments were used to examine whether older adults are able to strategically prioritise more valuable information in working memory and whether this could reduce age-related impairments. Younger (18–33 years) and older (60–90 years) adults were presented with coloured shapes and, following a brief delay, asked to recall the feature that had accompanied the probe item. In Experiment 1, participants were either asked to prioritise a more valuable object in the array (serial position 1, 2, or 3) or to treat them all equally. Older adults exhibited worse overall memory performance but were as able as younger adults to prioritise objects. In both groups, this ability was particularly apparent at the middle serial position. Experiment 2 then explored whether younger and older adults’ prioritisation is affected by presentation time. Replicating Experiment 1, older adults were able to prioritise the more valuable object in working memory, showing equivalent benefits and costs as younger adults. However, processing speed, as indexed by presentation time, was shown not to limit strategic prioritisation in either age group. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that, although older adults have poorer visual working memory overall, the ability to strategically direct attention to more valuable items in working memory is preserved across ageing.

The influence of anticipated monetary incentives on visual working memory performance in healthy younger and older adults

Motivation exerts substantial control over cognitive functions, including working memory. Although it is well known that both motivational control and working memory processes undergo a progressive decline with ageing, whether and to what extent their interaction is altered in old age remain unexplored. Here we aimed at uncovering the effect of reward anticipation on visual working memory performance in a large cohort of younger and older adults using a delayed-estimation task. We applied a three-component probabilistic model to dissociate the reward effects on three possible sources of error corrupting working memory performance: variability in recall, misbinding of object features and random guessing. The results showed that monetary incentives have a significant beneficial effect on overall working memory recall precision only in the group of younger adults. However, our model-based analysis resulted in significant reward effects on all three working memory component processes, which did not differ between the age groups, suggesting that model-based analysis is more sensitive to small reward-induced modulations in the case of older participants. These findings revealed that monetary incentives have a global boosting effect on working memory performance, which is deteriorated to some extent but still present in healthy older adults.

Learning in Visual Regions as Support for the Bias in Future Value-Driven Choice

Reinforcement learning can bias decision-making toward the option with the highest expected outcome. Cognitive learning theories associate this bias with the constant tracking of stimulus values and the evaluation of choice outcomes in the striatum and prefrontal cortex. Decisions however first require processing of sensory input, and to date, we know far less about the interplay between learning and perception. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study (N = 43) relates visual blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses to value beliefs during choice and signed prediction errors after outcomes. To understand these relationships, which co-occurred in the striatum, we sought relevance by evaluating the prediction of future value-based decisions in a separate transfer phase where learning was already established. We decoded choice outcomes with a 70% accuracy with a supervised machine learning algorithm that was given trial-by-trial BOLD from visual regions alongside more traditional motor, prefrontal, and striatal regions. Importantly, this decoding of future value-driven choice outcomes again highlighted an important role for visual activity. These results raise the intriguing possibility that the tracking of value in visual cortex is supportive for the striatal bias toward the more valued option in future choice.

The effects of age on reward magnitude processing in the monetary incentive delay task

Previous studies have suggested age-related differences in reward-directed behavior and cerebral processes in support of the age effects. However, it remains unclear how age may influence the processing of reward magnitude. Here, with 54 volunteers (22-74 years of age) participating in the Monetary Incentive Delay Task (MIDT) with explicit cues ($1, ¢1, or nil) and timed response to win, we characterized brain activations during anticipation and feedback and the effects of age on these regional activations. Behaviorally, age was associated with less reaction time (RT) difference between dollar and cent trials, as a result of slower response to the dollar trials; i.e., age was positively correlated with RT dollar - RT cent, with RT nil as a covariate. Both age and the RT difference ($1 - ¢1) were correlated with diminished activation of the right caudate head, right anterior insula, supplementary motor area (SMA)/pre-SMA, visual cortex, parahippocampal gyrus, right superior/middle frontal gyri, and left primary motor cortex during anticipation of $1 vs. ¢1 reward. Further, these regional activities mediated the age effects on RT differences. In responses to outcomes, age was associated with decreases in regional activations to dollar vs. cent loss but only because of higher age-related responses to cent losses. Together, these findings suggest age-related differences in sensitivity to the magnitude of reward. With lower cerebral responses during anticipation to win large rewards and higher responses to outcomes of small loss, aging incurs a constricted sensitivity to the magnitude of reward.

The Role of Selective Attention in Cross-modal Interactions between Auditory and Visual Features

Evans and Treisman (2010) showed systematic interactions between audition and vision when participants made speeded classifications in one modality while supposedly ignoring another. We found perceptual facilitation between high pitch and high visual position, high spatial frequency and small size, and interference between high pitch and low position, low spatial frequency and large size, while the converse was the case between low pitch and the same visual features. The present study examined the role of selective attention in these cross-modal interactions. Participants performed speeded classification or search tasks of low or high load while attempting to ignore irrelevant stimuli in a different modality. In both paradigms, congruency between the visual and the irrelevant auditory stimulus had an equal effect in the low and in the high perceptual load conditions. A third experiment tested divided attention, requiring participants to compare stimuli across modalities and respond to the visual-auditory compound. The congruency effect was as large with attention focused on one modality as when it was divided across both. These findings offer converging evidence that cross-modal interactions between corresponding basic features are independent of selective attention.

Neurodevelopmental shifts in learned value transfer on cognitive control during adolescence

Value-associated cues in the environment often enhance subsequent goal-directed behaviors in adults, a phenomenon supported by the integration of motivational and cognitive neural systems. Given that the interactions among these systems change throughout adolescence, we tested when the beneficial effects of value associations on subsequent cognitive control performance emerge during adolescence. Participants (N = 81) aged 13-20 completed a reinforcement learning task with four cue-incentive pairings that could yield high gain, low gain, high loss, or low loss outcomes. Next, participants completed a Go/NoGo task during fMRI where the NoGo targets comprised the previously learned cues, which tested how prior value associations influence cognitive control performance. Improved accuracy for previously learned high gain relative to low gain cues emerged with age. Older adolescents exhibited enhanced recruitment of the dorsal striatum and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during cognitive control execution to previously learned high gain relative to low gain cues. Older adolescents also expressed increased coupling between the dorsal striatum and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for high gain cues, whereas younger adolescents expressed increased coupling between the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These findings reveal that learned high value cue-incentive associations enhance cognitive control in late adolescence in parallel with value-selective recruitment of corticostriatal systems.

The intrinsic neural architecture of inhibitory control: The role of development and emotional experience

Inhibitory control is a key determinant of goal-directed behavior. Its susceptibility to reward implies that its variations may not only reflect cognitive ability, but also sensitivity to goal-relevant information. Since cognitive ability and motivational sensitivity vary as a function of age and mood, we hypothesized that their relevance for predicting individual differences in inhibition would similarly vary. Here, we tested this prediction with respect to the brain's intrinsic functional architecture. Specifically, we reasoned that age and affective functioning would both moderate the relationship between inhibition and resting state expression of the dynamic neural organization patterns linked to engaging in cognitive effort versus those involved in manipulating motivationally salient information. First, we used task fMRI data from the Human Connectome Project (N = 359 participants) to identify the brain organization patterns unique to effortful cognitive processing versus manipulation of motivationally relevant information. We then assessed the association between inhibitory control and relative expression of these two neural patterns in an independent resting state dataset from the Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland lifespan sample (N = 247). As hypothesized, the relation between inhibition and intrinsic functional brain architecture varied as a function of age and affective functioning. Among those with superior affective functioning, better inhibitory control in adolescence and early adulthood was associated with stronger resting state expression of the brain pattern that typified processing of motivationally salient information. The opposite effect emerged beyond the age of 49. Among individuals with poorer affective functioning, a significant link between inhibition and brain architecture emerged only before the age of 28. In this group, superior inhibition was associated with stronger resting state expression of the neural pattern that typified effortful cognitive processing. Our results thus imply that motivational relevance makes a unique contribution to superior cognitive functioning during earlier life stages. However, its relevance to higher-order mentation decreases with aging and increased prevalence of mood-related problems, which raises the possibility that patterns of neurobehavioral responsiveness to motivational salience may constitute sensitive markers of successful lifespan development.

Comparing Effects of Reward Anticipation on Working Memory in Younger and Older Adults

Goal-directed behavior requires sufficient resource allocation of cognitive control processes, such as the ability to prioritize relevant over less relevant information in working memory. Findings from neural recordings in animals and human multimodal imaging studies suggest that reward incentive mechanisms could facilitate the encoding and updating of context representations, which can have beneficial effects on working memory performance in young adults. In order to investigate whether these performance enhancing effects of reward on working memory processes are still preserved in old age, the current study aimed to investigate whether aging alters the effects of reward anticipation on the encoding and updating mechanisms in working memory processing. Therefore, a reward modulated verbal n-back task with age-adjusted memory load manipulation was developed to investigate reward modulation of working memory in younger (age 20-27) and older (age 65-78) adults. Our results suggest that the mechanism of reward anticipation in enhancing the encoding and updating of stimulus representations in working memory is still preserved in old age. EZ-diffusion modeling showed age distinct patterns of reward modulation of model parameters that correspond to different processes of memory-dependent decision making. Whereas processes of memory evidence accumulation and sensorimotor speed benefited from reward modulation, responses did not become more cautious with incentive motivation for older adults as it was observed in younger adults. Furthermore, individual differences in reward-related enhancement of decision speed correlated with cognitive processing fluctuation and memory storage capacity in younger adults, but no such relations were observed in older adults. These findings indicate that although beneficial effects of reward modulation on working memory can still be observed in old age, not all performance aspects are facilitated. Whereas reward facilitation of content representations in working memory seems to be relatively preserved, aging seems to affect the updating of reward contexts. Future research is needed to elucidate potential mechanisms for motivational regulation of the plasticity of working memory in old age.

Permanently online and permanently connected: Development and validation of the Online Vigilance Scale

Smartphones and other mobile devices have fundamentally changed patterns of Internet use in everyday life by making online access constantly available. The present paper offers a theoretical explication and empirical assessment of the concept of online vigilance, referring to users’ permanent cognitive orientation towards online content and communication as well as their disposition to exploit these options constantly. Based on four studies, a validated and reliable self-report measure of online vigilance was developed. In combination, the results suggest that the Online Vigilance Scale (OVS) shows a stable factor structure in various contexts and user populations and provides future work in communication, psychology, and other social sciences with a new measure of the individual cognitive orientation towards ubiquitous online communication.

The neurophysiological basis of developmental changes during sequential cognitive flexibility between adolescents and adults

Cognitive flexibility is a major facet of executive functions and often refers to sequential task control; that is, it is very likely that one may re-encounter a task that has previously been abandoned to carry out a different task. In the context of sequential cognitive flexibility, the "backward inhibition (BI) effect" has been studied quite extensively. Here we ask whether there are age-related differences between adolescents and adults to overcome BI and what system-neurophysiological mechanisms underlie these modulations. This was examined using a system neurophysiological study procedure combining event-related potentials data with source localization and EEG signal decomposition methods. We show that sequential cognitive flexibility, and the ability overcome backward inhibition, is inferior in adolescents compared with adults. Accounting for intra-individual variability in the neurophysiological data, this data suggest that two partly inter-related processes underlie the differences between adolescents than adults to overcome backward inhibition: One process refers to the suppression of the inhibitory effect of the n-1 trial on the n-2 trial during perceptual categorization of incoming information that is associated with right inferior frontal regions. The other process refers to immature response selection and conflict monitoring mechanisms associated with regions in the medial frontal cortex.

Developmental differences in the neural dynamics of observational learning

Learning from vicarious experience is central for educational practice, but not well understood with respect to its ontogenetic development and underlying neural dynamics. In this age-comparative study we compared behavioral and electrophysiological markers of learning from vicarious and one's own experience in children (age 8-10) and young adults. Behaviorally both groups benefitted from integrating vicarious experience into their own choices however, adults learned much faster from social information than children. The electrophysiological results show learning-related changes in the P300 to experienced and observed rewards in adults, but not in children, indicating that adults were more efficient in integrating observed and experienced information during learning. In comparison to adults, children showed an enhanced FRN for observed and experienced feedback, indicating that they focus more on valence information than adults. Taken together, children compared to adults seem to be less able to rapidly assess the informational value of observed and experienced feedback during learning and consequently up-regulate their response to both, observed and experienced (particularly negative) feedback. When transferring the current findings to an applied context, educational practice should strengthen children's ability to use feedback information for learning and be particularly cautious with negative social feedback during supervised learning.

Adolescent Development of Value-Guided Goal Pursuit

Adolescents are challenged to orchestrate goal-directed actions in increasingly independent and consequential ways. In doing so, it is advantageous to use information about value to select which goals to pursue and how much effort to devote to them. Here, we examine age-related changes in how individuals use value signals to orchestrate goal-directed behavior. Drawing on emerging literature on value-guided cognitive control and reinforcement learning, we demonstrate how value and task difficulty modulate the execution of goal-directed action in complex ways across development from childhood to adulthood. We propose that the scope of value-guided goal pursuit expands with age to include increasingly challenging cognitive demands, and scaffolds on the emergence of functional integration within brain networks supporting valuation, cognition, and action.

Differences in response inhibition processes between adolescents and adults are modulated by sensory processes

Response inhibition processes undergo strong developmental changes. The same is true for sensory processes, and recent evidence shows that there also within-modality differences in the efficacy to trigger motor response inhibition. Yet, modulatory effects of within-modality differences during age-related changes in response inhibition between adolescence and adulthood are still indeterminate. We investigated this question in a system neurophysiological approach combining analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs) with temporal EEG signal decomposition and source localization processes. We used the somatosensory system to examine possible within-modality differences. The study shows that differences in response inhibition processes between adolescents and adults are modulated by sensory processes. Adolescents show deficient response inhibition when stimuli triggering these mechanisms are processed via SI somatosensory areas, compared to SII somatosensory areas. Opposed to this, no differences between adolescents and adults are evident, when response inhibition processes are triggered via SII cortical regions. The EEG data suggests that specific neurophysiological subprocesses are associated with this. Adolescents seem to encounter problems assigning processing resources to integrate motor with tactile information in posterior parietal areas when this information is processed via SI. Thus, basic perceptual and age-related processes interactively modulate response inhibition as an important instance of cognitive control.

Neurophysiological variability masks differences in functional neuroanatomical networks and their effectiveness to modulate response inhibition between children and adults

Executive functions are well-known to undergo developmental changes from childhood to adulthood. Considerable efforts have been made to elucidate the affected system neurophysiological mechanisms. But while it is well-known that developmental changes affect intra-individual variability, this potential bias has largely been neglected when investigating the neurophysiology underlying developmental differences between children and adults. We hypothesize that due to differences in intra-individual variability of neural processes between children and adults, reliable group differences will only be evident after accounting for intra-individual variability in neurophysiological processes. We, therefore, investigate response-inhibition processes as an important instance of executive control in children (between 10 and 14 years) and adults (between 20 and 29 years) and decompose EEG data on the basis of the latency and temporal variability. This was combined with source localization. Children showed more impulsive behavior than adults. Importantly, a reliable match between the neurophysiological and behavioral data could only be found when accounting for intra-individual variability in the EEG data. These decomposed data showed that children and adults use similar neurophysiological mechanisms at the response selection level to accomplish inhibitory control, but seem to engage different neuroanatomical structures to do so according to source localization results: In adults, these processes were related to the medial frontal cortex. In children, the same processes were reflected in a shift of the scalp topography and related to the superior parietal cortex. These shifts in neural networks were associated with lower effectiveness in exerting inhibitory control. However, these differences in the functional neuroanatomical architecture can only be seen when intra-individual variability is taken into account.

Sensitivity to value-driven attention is predicted by how we learn from value

Reward learning is known to influence the automatic capture of attention. This study examined how the rate of learning, after high- or low-value reward outcomes, can influence future transfers into value-driven attentional capture. Participants performed an instrumental learning task that was directly followed by an attentional capture task. A hierarchical Bayesian reinforcement model was used to infer individual differences in learning from high or low reward. Results showed a strong relationship between high-reward learning rates (or the weight that is put on learning after a high reward) and the magnitude of attentional capture with high-reward colors. Individual differences in learning from high or low rewards were further related to performance differences when high- or low-value distractors were present. These findings provide novel insight into the development of value-driven attentional capture by showing how information updating after desired or undesired outcomes can influence future deployments of automatic attention.

Reward-associated features capture attention in the absence of awareness: Evidence from object-substitution masking

Reward-associated visual features have been shown to capture visual attention, evidenced in faster and more accurate behavioral performance, as well as in neural responses reflecting lateralized shifts of visual attention to those features. Specifically, the contralateral N2pc event-related-potential (ERP) component that reflects attentional shifting exhibits increased amplitude in response to task-relevant targets containing a reward-associated feature. In the present study, we examined the automaticity of such reward-association effects using object-substitution masking (OSM) in conjunction with MEG measures of visual attentional shifts. In OSM, a visual-search array is presented, with the target item to be detected indicated by a surrounding mask (here, four surrounding squares). Delaying the offset of the target-surrounding four-dot mask relative to the offset of the rest of the target/distracter array disrupts the viewer's awareness of the target (masked condition), whereas simultaneous offsets do not (unmasked condition). Here we manipulated whether the color of the OSM target was or was not of a previously reward-associated color. By tracking reward-associated enhancements of behavior and the N2pc in response to masked targets containing a previously rewarded or unrewarded feature, the automaticity of attentional capture by reward could be probed. We found an enhanced N2pc response to targets containing a previously reward-associated color feature. Moreover, this enhancement of the N2pc by reward did not differ between masking conditions, nor did it differ as a function of the apparent visibility of the target within the masked condition. Overall, these results underscore the automaticity of attentional capture by reward-associated features, and demonstrate the ability of feature-based reward associations to shape attentional capture and allocation outside of perceptual awareness.