The Effect Of Reward And Punishment Expectations On Sustained Attention

Sustained attention is an important ability of attention,which is of great significance to people’s work and study.There are many factors that affect sustained attention,and reward is one of the important factors.Rewards can effectively improve sustained attention performance,improve task accuracy,and reduce error rates.Not only that,but the reward can enhance the stability of sustained attention,reduce volatility,and make the individual’s attention more focused.Although both reward and punishment can improve sustained attentional performance,reward and punishment are two different psychological states that activate the motivational approach system and the motivational avoidance system respectively,so their effects on sustained attentional performance are not exactly the same.In this study,a behavioral experiment and an event-related potential experiment were used to explore the effects of reward and punishment on sustained attention performance and sustained attention fluctuations,and to analyze the similarities and differences between reward and punishment on sustained attention.This experiment is mainly divided into two parts.The first part is a behavioral experiment.The Not X-CPT task is used to study the effect of high and low reward and punishment expectations on sustained attention performance.The difference in missed press rate and accuracy d’,it was found that rewards and punishments effectively improved the accuracy of the sustained attention task,and reduced the task error rate and response variability;Experiment 2 used event-related potential technology with high temporal resolution,focusing on exploring the impact of reward and punishment expectations on the volatility of sustained attention,as well as the electrophysiological indicators of the difference between reward and punishment expectations on sustained attention.The results of experiment 2 show that both reward and punishment improve sustained attention.,but the effects of reward and punishment on the component of sustained attention are different,as shown in the following: subjects under the reward condition have shorter response times and stronger responsiveness to the persistent go stimulus.Reflected in the EEG component,the amplitude of P3 under the reward condition is smaller than that under the punishment condition;under the punishment condition,the subjects’ response time is longer,and the inhibition to the stimulus is strengthened,which is manifested in the EEG component under the punishment condition.The N2 volatility of is smaller than that in the reward condition.Combining behavioral data and EEG data,this study draws the following conclusions:（1）The influence of reward and punishment on persistent attention accords with the opportunity cost model of continuous attention,that is,when the potential reward is higher than the cost,persistent attention is better,and both can effectively improve the performance and stability of continuous attention.Individuals are more sensitive to punishment than to rewards,and relatively higher rewards are more conducive to improving the performance and stability of continuous attention,but too high punishment is not conducive to improving the performance and stability of continuous attention.（2）Reward and punishment activate different motivation systems and affect different components of continuous attention.Reward activates the behavioral approach system,effectively improves the individual’s response to persistent task-related stimuli,reduces the missed rate,and speeds up the task response time.Subjects do not need to consume too much cognitive resources to persistent stimuli under reward conditions.Punishment activates the behavioral avoidance system,effectively improves individual inhibition to task-independent stimuli,reduces task response time,and strengthens the overall inhibition.Subjects’ inhibition of dominant responses under the condition of punishment does not need to consume too much cognitive resources.