The Effect Of Reward Motivation On Proactive Inhibition And Mind Wandering

Reward is a valuable or desirable thing that an individual obtains through his efforts,which is a very common incentive strategy in human society.The reward-seeking stage has very high motivational value,which can greatly stimulate personal potential.Inhibition refers to the process in which the brain suppresses the input,internal processing and output of interfering information.Proactive interference means that the contents of previous learning and memory will interfere with the learning and memory of later new items.Proactive inhibition,as the name suggests,refers to the individuals' ability to suppress proactive interference.Individuals' learning and memory are structured on the basis of previous learning contents.It can be said that proactive inhibition plays an extremely important role in the whole process of learning and growth of individuals.Mind wandering refers to the process in which the individual's attention is transferred spontaneously from the current external environment and the endogenous information appears spontaneously in the consciousness,which plays an important role in people's daily life.These three objects are all common and key factors in learning and work,so this paper takes them as research objects.Previous studies have shown that reward can improve the ability of working memory and inhibition control.Proactive inhibition,as an important inhibition control ability,is also the core mechanism of working memory ability.At the same time,previous studies have shown that reward can affect attention choice and attention maintenance of people.According to the mechanism of mind wandering,attention is one of the core influencing factors of mind wandering.Therefore,whether the reward motivation can affect the individual's proactive inhibition and mind wandering is the focus of this study.In addition,the mechanism of mind wandering is closely related to the ability of working memory.Many previous studies have shown that working memory can reflect the inhibition and control ability of individuals,thus predicting the frequency of mind wandering.Proactive inhibition,as an important inhibitory control ability,is the core mechanism of working memory.Therefore,the relationship between proactive inhibition and mind wandering is one of the focuses of this paper.In order to further explore the above issues,this study selected college students as subjects and designed three studies.In Study 1,a delayed sample matching test with Chinese characters as stimulus materials was used to measure the proactive inhibition ability of subjects.Meanwhile reward stimulation was added to the test to explore the effect of reward motivation on proactive inhibition ability.The results showed that in the delayed sample matching test,the response time of the subjects to the familiar negative stimulus material was significantly longer than that of the unfamiliar negative stimulus material,which indicates that there was a significant proactive inhibition process during the test.According to the Donders subtraction principle,when subjects respond to familiar and unfamiliar negative experimental materials,the similarity of Chinese characters in familiar negative experimental materials will cause the process of proactive inhibition,and other processes are the same.Therefore,the difference between the reaction time of familiar negative experimental materials and that of unfamiliar negative experimental materials can reflect the time required for proactive inhibition.By comparison,it was found that the time required for proactive inhibition in the reward part was significantly shorter than that in the non-reward part.In other words,the ability of proactive inhibition in the reward part was stronger.In Study 2,a continuous attentional response task with reward stimulus and thought probes was used to measure the mind wandering frequency on state level and to explore the effect of reward motivation on mind wandering frequency.The results showed that mind wandering does occurred at the state level,and there was a significant correlation between various indicators of mind wandering.In addition,by comparing the reward and non-reward parts of the experiment,it was found that the frequency of mind wandering in the reward part was significantly lower than that in the non-reward part.In Study 3,“the mind wandering frequency questionnaire” was used to measure the frequency of mind wandering on the trait level.At the same time,combined with study 1 and study 2,the relationship between various indicators of mind wandering,the relationship between proactive inhibition ability and mind wandering,and the regulating effect of reward motivation between proactive inhibition and mind wandering were comprehensively analyzed.Through correlation analysis,variance analysis,T test,cross group comparison of Amos and other statistical methods,it was found that mind wandering frequency was significantly related on trait and state level,which could confirm each other;The score of proactive inhibition ability was negatively correlated with the score of mind wandering frequency,and the correlation value was larger than that between working memory capacity and mind wandering frequency;There was no significant difference in the relationship between proactive inhibition and mind wandering between reward and non-reward parts.To sum up,after the above three parts of the study,the following conclusions were obtained:(1)Reward motivation can significantly improve the individuals' proactive inhibition ability.(2)Reward motivation can significantly reduce the frequency of mind wandering.(3)Proactive inhibition ability can significantly negatively predict mind wandering frequency.(4)The correlation between proactive inhibition and mind wandering frequency was more significant than that between working memory performance and mind wandering frequency.In other words,the proactive inhibition ability is a deeper factor in the occurrence of mind wandering.(5)The moderating effect of reward motivation on the relationship between proactive inhibition and mind wandering has not reached a significant level.The innovation of this study lies in the exploration of the influence of reward motivation on proactive inhibition and mind wandering,which provides an important reference for the use of reward to improve proactive inhibition ability,increase the awareness of mind wandering,reduce distraction,and improve efficiency in future research and daily life.In addition,this study directly explored the relationship between proactive inhibition and mind wandering,so as to further explore the influencing factors of mind wandering,and provided a new idea for the better control of mind wandering.