Our prior experiences shape the way that we prioritize information from the environment for further processing, analysis, and action. We show in three experiments that this process of attentional ...prioritization is critically modulated by the degree of uncertainty in these previous experiences. Participants completed a visual search task in which they made a saccade to a target to earn a monetary reward. The color of a color-singleton distractor in the search array signaled the reward outcome(s) that were available, with different degrees of variance (uncertainty). Participants were never required to look at the colored distractor, and doing so would slow their response to the target. Nevertheless, across all experiments, participants were more likely to look at distractors associated with high outcome variance versus low outcome variance. This pattern was observed when all distractors had equal expected value (Experiment 1), when the difference in variance was opposed by a difference in expected value (i.e., the high-variance distractor had a low expected value, and vice versa: Experiment 2), and when high- and low-variance distractors were paired with the maximum-value outcome on an equal proportion of trials (Experiment 3). Our findings demonstrate that experience of prediction error plays a fundamental role in guiding "attentional exploration," wherein priority is driven by the potential for a stimulus to reduce future uncertainty through a process of learning, as opposed to maximizing current information gain.
Public Significance Statement
Uncertainty is a ubiquitous feature of our experience of the world and may represent a common currency in neural processing. This study demonstrates that our attention is involuntarily drawn to unreliable sources of information even when more reliable or rewarding options are available, highlighting the role of uncertainty as a fundamental motivating force in attentional control. This drive to explore the unknown has broad implications for the way that we gather information from the environment. For instance, prioritizing stimuli whose consequences are currently unknown may be a central way that our attention system facilitates learning: by focusing on uncertain stimuli now, we can learn more about them, reducing our uncertainty when we encounter them again in the future. These findings could also shed light on attentional processes linked to anxiety and gambling, where individual differences in responses to uncertainty may play a central role.
Before we can make any choice, we must gather information from the environment about what our options are. This information-gathering process is critically mediated by attention, and our attention ...is, in turn, shaped by our previous experiences with-and learning about-stimuli and their consequences. In this review, we highlight studies demonstrating a rapid and automatic influence of reward learning on attentional capture and argue that these findings provide a human analog of sign-tracking behavior observed in nonhuman animals-wherein signals of reward gain incentive salience and become attractive targets for attention (and overt behavior) in their own right. We then consider the implications of this idea for understanding the drivers of cue-controlled behavior, with focus on addiction as a case in which choices with regard to reward-related stimuli can become injurious to health. We argue that motivated behavior in general-and addiction in particular-can be understood within a "biased competition" framework: Different options and outcomes compete for attentional priority as a function of top-down goals, bottom-up salience, and prior experience, and the winner of this competition becomes the target for subsequent outcome-directed and flexible behavior. Finally, we outline the implications of the biased-competition framework for cognitive, behavioral, and socioeconomic interventions for addiction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
In recent decades, numerous studies have suggested a positive relationship between prosociality and well-being. What remains less clear are (a) what the magnitude of this relationship is, and (b) ...what the moderators that influence it are. To address these questions, we conducted a meta-analysis to examine the strength of the prosociality to well-being link under different operationalizations, and how a set of theoretical, demographic, and methodological variables moderate the link. While the results revealed a modest overall mean effect size (r = .13, K = 201, N = 198,213) between prosociality and well-being, this masked the substantial variability in the effect as a function of numerous moderators. In particular, the effect of prosociality on eudaimonic well-being was stronger than that on hedonic well-being. Prosociality was most strongly related to psychological functioning-showing a more modest relationship with psychological malfunctioning and physical health. Using prosociality scales was more strongly associated with well-being than using measures of volunteering/helping frequency or status. In addition, informal helping (vs. formal helping) was linked to more well-being benefits. Demographically, younger givers exhibited higher levels of well-being other than physical health, while older and retired givers reported better physical health only. Female givers showed stronger relationships between prosociality and eudaimonic well-being, psychological malfunctioning, and physical health. Methodologically, the magnitude of the link was stronger in studies using primary (vs. secondary) data and with higher methodological rigor (i.e., measurement reliability and validity). We discussed all of these results and implications and suggested directions for future research.
Public Significance Statement
The present meta-analysis suggests a small and significant association between prosocial behavior and well-being. It also provides researchers with important insights into what theoretical (i.e., types of prosociality and well-being), demographical (i.e., age, gender, and retirement status), and methodological factors (i.e., primary vs. secondary data collection and methodological rigor) may strengthen or weaken the link between prosociality and well-being.
A cue that signals reward can capture attention and elicit approach behaviors in people and animals. The current study examined whether attentional capture by reward-related cues is associated with ...severity of addiction-related and obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Participants were recruited via Mechanical Turk and included 143 adults (Mage = 34 years, SD = 8.5; 43% female) who had endorsed at least 1 addiction-related or obsessive-compulsive behavior in the past month. All assessment components were delivered via the Internet and included questionnaires to assess severity of compulsivity-related problems across addiction-related and obsessive-compulsive behaviors, as well as a visual search task to measure reward-related attentional capture. Reward-related attentional capture was associated with severity of compulsivity, transdiagnostically. These findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms that underlie compulsive behaviors and suggest that reward-related attentional capture is a promising transdiagnostic cognitive risk marker for compulsivity.
The authors examined whether alterations in the brain's reward network operate as a mechanism across the spectrum of risk for depression. They then tested whether these alterations are specific to ...anhedonia as compared with low mood and whether they are predictive of depressive outcomes.
Functional MRI was used to collect blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses to anticipation of reward in the monetary incentive task in 1,576 adolescents in a community-based sample. Adolescents with current subthreshold depression and clinical depression were compared with matched healthy subjects. In addition, BOLD responses were compared across adolescents with anhedonia, low mood, or both symptoms, cross-sectionally and longitudinally.
Activity in the ventral striatum was reduced in participants with subthreshold and clinical depression relative to healthy comparison subjects. Low ventral striatum activation predicted transition to subthreshold or clinical depression in previously healthy adolescents at 2-year follow-up. Brain responses during reward anticipation decreased in a graded manner between healthy adolescents, adolescents with current or future subthreshold depression, and adolescents with current or future clinical depression. Low ventral striatum activity was associated with anhedonia but not low mood; however, the combined presence of both symptoms showed the strongest reductions in the ventral striatum in all analyses.
The findings suggest that reduced striatal activation operates as a mechanism across the risk spectrum for depression. It is associated with anhedonia in healthy adolescents and is a behavioral indicator of positive valence systems, consistent with predictions based on the Research Domain Criteria.
More than 4 decades of research and 9 meta-analyses have focused on the undermining effect: namely, the debate over whether the provision of extrinsic incentives erodes intrinsic motivation. This ...review and meta-analysis builds on such previous reviews by focusing on the interrelationship among intrinsic motivation, extrinsic incentives, and performance, with reference to 2 moderators: performance type (quality vs. quantity) and incentive contingency (directly performance-salient vs. indirectly performance-salient), which have not been systematically reviewed to date. Based on random-effects meta-analytic methods, findings from school, work, and physical domains (k = 183, N = 212,468) indicate that intrinsic motivation is a medium to strong predictor of performance (ρ = .21-45). The importance of intrinsic motivation to performance remained in place whether incentives were presented. In addition, incentive salience influenced the predictive validity of intrinsic motivation for performance: In a "crowding out" fashion, intrinsic motivation was less important to performance when incentives were directly tied to performance and was more important when incentives were indirectly tied to performance. Considered simultaneously through meta-analytic regression, intrinsic motivation predicted more unique variance in quality of performance, whereas incentives were a better predictor of quantity of performance. With respect to performance, incentives and intrinsic motivation are not necessarily antagonistic and are best considered simultaneously. Future research should consider using nonperformance criteria (e.g., well-being, job satisfaction) as well as applying the percent-of-maximum-possible (POMP) method in meta-analyses.
Rationale
A dimensional approach in psychiatry aims to identify core mechanisms of mental disorders across nosological boundaries.
Objectives
We compared anticipation of reward between major ...psychiatric disorders, and investigated whether reward anticipation is impaired in several mental disorders and whether there is a common psychopathological correlate (negative mood) of such an impairment.
Methods
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a monetary incentive delay (MID) task to study the functional correlates of reward anticipation across major psychiatric disorders in 184 subjects, with the diagnoses of alcohol dependence (
n
= 26), schizophrenia (
n
= 44), major depressive disorder (MDD,
n
= 24), bipolar disorder (acute manic episode,
n
= 13), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD,
n
= 23), and healthy controls (
n
= 54). Subjects’ individual Beck Depression Inventory-and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-scores were correlated with clusters showing significant activation during reward anticipation.
Results
During reward anticipation, we observed significant group differences in ventral striatal (VS) activation: patients with schizophrenia, alcohol dependence, and major depression showed significantly less ventral striatal activation compared to healthy controls. Depressive symptoms correlated with dysfunction in reward anticipation regardless of diagnostic entity. There was no significant correlation between anxiety symptoms and VS functional activation.
Conclusion
Our findings demonstrate a neurobiological dysfunction related to reward prediction that transcended disorder categories and was related to measures of depressed mood. The findings underline the potential of a dimensional approach in psychiatry and strengthen the hypothesis that neurobiological research in psychiatric disorders can be targeted at core mechanisms that are likely to be implicated in a range of clinical entities.
Learning, Reward, and Decision Making O'Doherty, John P; Cockburn, Jeffrey; Pauli, Wolfgang M
Annual review of psychology,
01/2017, Letnik:
68, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In this review, we summarize findings supporting the existence of multiple behavioral strategies for controlling reward-related behavior, including a dichotomy between the goal-directed or ...model-based system and the habitual or model-free system in the domain of instrumental conditioning and a similar dichotomy in the realm of Pavlovian conditioning. We evaluate evidence from neuroscience supporting the existence of at least partly distinct neuronal substrates contributing to the key computations necessary for the function of these different control systems. We consider the nature of the interactions between these systems and show how these interactions can lead to either adaptive or maladaptive behavioral outcomes. We then review evidence that an additional system guides inference concerning the hidden states of other agents, such as their beliefs, preferences, and intentions, in a social context. We also describe emerging evidence for an arbitration mechanism between model-based and model-free reinforcement learning, placing such a mechanism within the broader context of the hierarchical control of behavior.
Research Aims: The aim of this study is to explore the effects of employee rewards on employee performance. Design/Methodology/Approach: The information utilized in this investigation was already ...publicly available. Online search engines and associated periodicals were used to compile the secondary data. To back up the research, appropriate textbooks were examined. Research Findings: Both financial rewards and non-financial rewards influence the performance of employees in an organization. However, extrinsic rewards have a short-term effect on employees’ behaviour while intrinsic rewards have a long-term effect. Theoretical Contribution/Originality: The study contributes to theory by advancing the comprehension of the influence of total rewards (financial and non-financial rewards) on the performance of employees. Managerial Implication: The findings of this research will help employees and employers in understanding the critical effects of employee rewards on employee performance. Research Limitation & Implications: This study relied only on secondary sources, and the investigator lacked no means of verifying its accuracy.
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