Reward-priming of location in visual search

Clayton Hickey, Leonardo Chelazzi, Jan Theeuwes

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

44 Citations (Scopus)
115 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Existing visual search research has demonstrated that the receipt of reward will be beneficial for subsequent perceptual and attentional processing of features that have characterized targets, but detrimental for processing of features that have characterized irrelevant distractors. Here we report a similar effect of reward on location. Observers completed a visual search task in which they selected a target, ignored a salient distractor, and received random-magnitude reward for correct performance. Results show that when target selection garnered rewarding outcome attention is subsequently a.) primed to return to the target location, and b.) biased away from the location that was occupied by the salient, task-irrelevant distractor. These results suggest that in addition to priming features, reward acts to guide visual search by priming contextual locations of visual stimuli.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere103372
Pages (from-to)1-9
Number of pages9
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume9
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 Jul 2014

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
  • Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
  • Medicine(all)

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Reward-priming of location in visual search'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this