Reward modulates orienting and reorienting in exogenous cueing.

It is well know that rewards influence attentional selection, so that we may adapt our behavior to maximize reward rate. Both reward-signaling cues and exogenous cues capture attention automatically and cause changes in performance at their location. The typical time course of changes due to exogenous cues shows an initial facilitation effect at the cued location that is followed by inhibition after 200-300 ms. For reward-signaling cues facilitation is typically known to last longer. However, the extent to which reward and exogenous cueing effects interact remains largely unexplored. In a series of experiments, an abrupt onset (50% valid) was followed by two colored circular stimuli presented on the left and right of fixation. Observers performed a location-discrimination task on dots presented in these circular stimuli. The color of the circular target stimulus indicated whether a high or low reward could be obtained for that trial. To investigate the different temporal phases of exogenous cueing effects, short and long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) were used. On both validly and invalidly cued trials, responses were faster when the target was presented in the high compared to the low reward-signaling stimulus. This might imply that observers orient and reorient faster towards high reward-signaling stimuli, or that they disengage more easily from low reward-signaling stimuli. In a second experiment, we presented the exogenous cue in the high or low reward-signaling color. The high reward cue elicited faster responses at the cued location for both the short and long SOA, whereas the low reward cue elicited faster responses at the uncued location for both the short and long SOA. These results indicate that high reward-signaling exogenous cues can capture and maintain attention beyond the typical 200-300 ms window, whereas low reward-signaling exogenous cues seem to promote fast reorienting towards the uncued location. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.