Effects Of Feature-based Reward Association On Components Of Attentional Network

In recent years,research had found that rewards not only play a role in the individual's behavioral level,but also affect individual's attention.Previous studies had found that the human attention system can be divided into three types of attentional network components(alert,orientation,and execution control components)according to their functional differences.However,there is no research report on the impact of rewards on the three components of the attention network.In this study,the attention network test was used to explore the respective and integrated effects of the stimulus features associated with rewards on the three attentional network components.All experiments were divided into training phase and testing phase.In training phase,when the participant chosed a particular color in the gambling game,there would be different amount of reward feedback(such as 10,2 and 0).Participants would make more and faster optimal choices as the block increases.Experiments 1 and 2 respectively measure the impact of the reward history on the alertness and orientation functions.Based on the attention network test,the double cue(Experiment 1)and the spatial cue(Experiment 2)are respectively set to four conditions of high value,low value,no value,and no color.In Experiment 3,the cue screen was removed,and the degree of interference of the flanker suppression stimuli of different value types on the target stimuli was observed to measure the influence of the reward on the attention execution control.Experiment 4 is to set the double cue and spatial cue conditions to the high value reward history,the low value reward history and the valueless reward history in the traditional attention network test experiment paradigm,observeing whether it is possible to separately adjust the size of the interaction between the alert and the execution control network.and also the interaction between the orientation and the execution control.The results of the study found that compared to the stimuli features that associated with the low-value feedback during the learning phase,the stimuli linked to the high-value feedback appear to improve significantly in both the alertness and directional functionswhen they appear in the subsequent test phase.(Experiments 1 and 2),and significant interference was paid to the attentional execution control function(Experiment 3).And the results of Experiment 4 show that the reward can adjust the degree of interaction between the orientation and the execution control,which is reflected in the fact that the reward can make the promotion of the orientation more effective in implementing the execution control;and the results also show that the reward does not adjust the extent of the negative effect of the alert and the execution control confirmed by the previous experiments.In summary,this study can be seen that the rewards have different qualitative effects on the three attentional network components.The rewards will promote attentional alertness and orientation functions,and when the reward appears as a flanker distractors,the execution control function of the attention will be more suppressed,and the reward will adjust the effect of the alertness and the orientation network on the execution of the control network,and show negative adjustment and positive adjustment,respectively.And the reward can only adjust the size of the interaction between the orientation and the execution control,but can not adjust the interaction between the alert and the execution control.