Reward Effect Influence The Target Identifying Process In The Attentional Blink

There is a well-known phenomenon of temporary attentional deficit, which named attentional blink (AB) in attention research. AB refers to the impaired identification of the second of two targets (T2) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RS VP) task when it followed first target (T1) approximately within the period of200to500ms. Recently, more and more AB studies focused on how the emotion and motivation modulate the attentional operation in order to make a more comprehensive understanding of AB phenomenon and the general attention mechanism. In particular, some recent findings highlighted that the dopamine, one of neurotransmitters related to the brain reward system, plays a crucial role in the attention control system. The manipulation of reward/punishment evidently affects the performance in various attention tasks. However, it is unknown whether and how the reward/punishment influences the performance in the AB task. In three experiments, we investigated the target identification performance by manipulating the level of reward and punishment based on the responses to targets. In experiment1, we manipulated reward/punishment value in both targets, and no significant effect of reward was found in both T1and T2identification performance. In experiment2. we gave the reward/punishment value only to T1. and found that the identification accuracy of T2was benefited from the rewarded T1in lag1condition. In contrast, the T2performance was significantly affected only in lag3condition, that is, the highest value of reward/punishment enlarged the AB effect. In experiment3, we gave the reward/punishment value only to T2, the results showed that when T2was display in lag1condition, the T1identification performance was significantly impaired by the highest reward/punishment value. However, the T2performance was not significantly affected by the reward/punishment value. These results suggested that the rewarded target will affect each other in adjacent time course, and either the enhanced or impaired effect was decided by which target have been manipulated. Nevertheless, The AB size was discovered intensefying in rewarded1st target condition and declining in rewarded2nd target condition. The pattern of the results implies the neurotransmitter like dopamine which is sensitive to the objects with reward/punishment values in brain motivation system has an important function role in AB, by modulating the top-down control signal during the task.