Abstract
Value positive incentives (high vs. low values) have been shown to have an effect on attention when performing simple motor tasks (Anderson, Laurent, & Yantis, 2011). During a training phase, participants learned to associate stimuli with value (e.g., monetary reward). Following training, the presence of these value associated stimuli serve as distractors increasing response time compared to when there were no value associated stimuli in the environment. Little research, however, has yet been done regarding the impact of negative outcomes on attention capture and response times. The purpose of this study was then to determine whether stimuli associated with negative value would affect response time. The study was broken into three separate experiments. The first experiment was a replicate of original experiment (only positive outcomes) and was used as a manipulation check to verify that the original study could be replicated in our lab. The second experiment incorporates positive and negative outcomes, used to compare the effects of the different forms of value. The third experiment included varying values of negative outcomes (high and low penalties). All three experiments used response times as the determinant of performance. Results indicated that high-value positive outcomes caused more attentional capture, causing participants to have increased response times in the positive only experiment. However, when negative outcomes were introduced, the value associated stimuli (positive or negative) had no effect on response time. These results indicate that positive and negatively associated stimuli have differential effects on attention capture.
