Abstract:

In the current study, we adopted a training-test paradigm to investigate the influence of categorical semantic word information associated with rewards on non-spatial attentional capture. During the training phase, participants made a forced-choice between two two-character words belonging to different categories. The semantic words of different categories were respectively associated with high or low levels of monetary rewards, but the participants were not informed about these. During the testing phase, no additional rewards were provided, participants performed a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task and responded to the category of the target semantic word. In some trials, the differential rewarded categorical semantic words in the previous training phase were presented as task-irrelevant distractors prior to the target words and the different time intervals between the presentation of the distractor and the target were set. The results showed that when the categorical semantic words associated with high reward served as distractors, compared with the condition that distractors associated with low reward and the neutral condition, the participants’ accuracy rate in identifying the target word significantly decreased. However, this effect only occurred under the condition of short time interval. These findings suggest that reward can be selectively associated with semantic information and trigger non-spatial attentional capture.

Key words: non-spatial attentional capture, reward-associated, semantic word, RSVP task

摘要：

本研究采用训练−测试范式考察了与奖励联结的类别语义词信息对非空间注意捕获的影响。在训练阶段，被试对两个不同类别的两字词进行选择，将不同类别的语义词分别与高、低水平金钱奖励建立联结，但不告知被试。测试阶段不再给予被试奖励，要求被试完成快速系列视觉呈现(RSVP)任务，对目标语义词的类别进行探测反应。在一些试次中，先前训练阶段和不同奖励水平联结的类别语义词作为任务无关的分心词呈现在目标词之前，并设置了不同的间隔时间(230 ms和690 ms)。结果发现：当与高奖励联结的类别语义词作为分心词出现时，相对于低奖励联结分心词条件和无奖励联结词的中性条件，被试识别目标词的正确率显著降低，但这种影响只出现在短的时间间隔条件下。本研究结果表明奖励能够选择性地和语义水平的信息建立联结，并能产生非空间性的注意捕获。

关键词: 非空间注意捕获, 奖励联结, 语义词, RSVP任务