Value-driven Attentional Capture In States Of Different Consciousness

Attentional capture refers to the perceptual process where attention is attracted to some stimuli,or the perceptual process prioritizes some stimuli.Unlike traditional stimulus-driven or contingent attentional capture,in recent years a large number of researchers have found that visual stimulus feature associated with value information can also influence attentional selection,which is termed as value-driven attentional capture.Although the association of the states of consciousness in attentional capture research has received much attention,it is controversial in traditional studies of attentional capture mechanisms,as it is not yet conclusive whether the level of consciousness can actually regulate attentional capture and what kind of attentional capture occurs at different levels of consciousness.In particular,current research on value-driven attentional capture has mostly focused on consciousness,and it remains to be explored whether cues associated with value under consciousness can capture attention.The current study aims to explore the mechanisms of value-driven attentional capture under different levels of consciousness and focuses on traditional stimulus-driven attentional capture versus goal-driven attentional capture to explore whether there is an interaction between different types of driven attentional capture at different levels of consciousness.In Experiment 1,we used a cue-target paradigm design with different cue presentation times to measure stimulus-driven attentional capture at the levels of unconscious through the cueing effects to obtain reliability validation for the unconsciousness state manipulation used in this study.Experiment 2,which implements the value-stimulus feature association through training,used a before-and-after masking paradigm to mask the stimulus after association with the value at the unconscious level to examine value-driven attentional capture at different states of consciousness,and validated previous unconscious processing studies of endogenous(stimulus-driven)or exogenous(target-driven)attention by manipulating cue validity and information validity.After respectively exploring the three interactions between attentional capture.We found that 1)the value-driven attentional capture effect in the conscious condition appeared only at the beginning of the experiment and disappeared rapidly with time.In contrast,value-driven attentional capture was found in the unconscious condition.Value-driven attentional capture was not dependent on consciousness,and attentional reward was possible in the absence of awareness of the cue.2)Exogenous and endogenous attention are two components that are processed independently in the formation of attentional capture.However,value-driven attentional capture can modulate the effects of exogenous attention,and this modulation occurs under conditions of different levels of consciousness,which is consistent with Anderson’s hypothesis of how value-driven attentional capture plays a role in attentional prioritization theory:values influence attentional deployment by modulating stimulus-driven attentional capture.