How do magnitude and frequency of monetary reward guide visual search?

Won, Bo-Yeong; Leber, Andrew B. · 2016 · Crossref

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-016-1154-z

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Summary

This study investigates how monetary reward magnitude and frequency guide spatial attention during visual search. While prior research established that humans prioritize locations where targets appear frequently, evidence regarding the influence of reward magnitude (the value of the target) on spatial attention remained mixed. The authors sought to determine whether the visual search apparatus equally exploits both types of value information or if it favors one over the other. To address this, they conducted four experiments manipulating reward contingencies across display quadrants while controlling for expected value, ensuring that participants in magnitude and frequency conditions were similarly motivated. In Experiment 1, participants performed a visual search task to find a target among distractors. In the magnitude condition (Experiment 1A), targets appeared equally often in all quadrants, but the points earned varied by location. In the frequency condition (Experiment 1B), the points earned were constant, but targets appeared more often in specific quadrants. Results showed that participants significantly prioritized high-frequency locations, demonstrating faster reaction times (RTs) that increased over time. In contrast, participants showed negligible sensitivity to spatial reward magnitude, with no significant RT differences between high- and low-value quadrants. A direct comparison confirmed that the frequency effect was significantly stronger than the magnitude effect. To determine if this insensitivity was specific to spatial attention or general to magnitude learning, Experiment 2 manipulated reward magnitude based on target color rather than location. Participants successfully learned to prioritize high-value colors, showing faster RTs for targets associated with higher rewards. This indicated that the visual search system can process magnitude information when it is tied to non-spatial features. Experiment 3 attempted to incentivize spatial magnitude learning by using limited-exposure displays, forcing participants to search quickly to earn rewards. Despite this increased incentive, participants still failed to prioritize high-magnitude spatial locations. Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that participants could use spatial magnitude information in a modified choice task, further isolating the deficit to the visual search process itself. The findings conclude that visual search is guided primarily by spatial reward frequency rather than spatial reward magnitude. The authors suggest that the cognitive machinery mediating visual search is not equally penetrable by all sources of value information. While frequency information offers a clear behavioral benefit by allowing observers to predict target locations and speed up search, magnitude information does not provide the same predictive advantage for spatial location. This distinction highlights a dissociation between how reward guides general decision-making and how it guides the specific mechanisms of visual search, suggesting that spatial attention prioritizes probability cues over value cues.

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• visual search