The Effect Of Perceptual Load On Reward-driven Attentional Distraction Outside The Attention Windo

Reward-driven distraction refers to the distraction of attention caused by stimuli unrelated to tasks and related to rewards.An important model in the field of attention allocation is the Perceptual Load Theory(PLT),which believes that after resources are allocated to stimuli related to the current task,any remaining resources will be allocated to irrelevant stimuli.This explains why task independent information is processed.Previous studies have shown that there is a phenomenon of reward-driven distraction under high perceptual load conditions,which is also evidence for its automatic attention mechanism.However,the study did not further explore the impact of changes in attention windows.Therefore,this article conducted two studies.Study 1 aims to explore the impact of the location of distractors(inside/outside the attention window)on reward-driven distraction.We control the attention window to a fixed state and distinguish the position of the distractor in the attention window by changing the distance between the target and the distractor.After receiving reward connection training,use 2(distractor position: pay attention to inside the window,pay attention to outside the window)×2(Relationship between goals and distractions: consistent,inconsistent)× 3(reward: high,low,none)subjects were designed to conduct research on this issue.It was found that the interference generated by distractions located outside the attention window decreased significantly.It is worth noting that reward-driven distraction was still observed outside the attention window.This indicates that rewards seem to be able to break through the attention window limitations to gain additional attention.Study 2 follows the experimental setup where the distractor is located outside the attention window in Study 1,and explores how reward-driven distraction outside the attention window is influenced by perceptual load by manipulating perceptual load.Study adopted 2(perceptual load: high,low)× 2(Relationship between goals and distractions: consistent,inconsistent)× 2(reward: high,low)within the subject design.The results showed that reward-driven distraction was observed regardless of whether the perceptual load was high or low.Through the analysis of the research results,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)Whether the distractor is located within the attention window does not affect the occurrence of reward-driven distraction.(2)The location of distractions affects the degree of reward-driven distraction,especially for low reward distractions.(3)Perceptual load affects the degree of attentional dispersion,but does not affect the existence of reward-driven distraction.Even under high load conditions,distraction still occurs.The results support the viewpoint of reward-driven distraction and automatic attention mechanism.