Extinction of outcome-specific Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT), instrumental outcome devaluation, and reward-related attentional capture are predicted by affect-driven impulsivity

TL;DR

This study explores how emotion dysregulation affects attention to reward cues and action control through experiments on impulsivity and learning.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel framework linking affect-driven impulsivity to incentive salience and reward-related attentional capture.

Findings

Outcome devaluation correlated positively with specific PIT and negatively with negative urgency.

Pavlovian extinction of specific PIT correlated negatively with negative urgency.

The VMAC effect showed mixed correlations with negative urgency, suggesting automatic attentional processes.

Abstract

In two online experiments, we aimed to study the relationship between emotion dysregulation and persistence of incentive salience attributed to reward cues. Participants’ negative urgency (NU) was assessed before they completed a value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC) task measuring incentive salience as attentional sign-tracking. This consisted of two phases – rewarded and unrewarded – to evaluate the persistence of the VMAC effect. Subsequently, a Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) procedure was employed as another measure of incentive salience. In Experiment 1 both outcome-specific and general PIT effects were assessed, along with the impact of instrumental outcome devaluation (OD). Experiment 2 focused on the effect of Pavlovian extinction on specific PIT. Both outcome devaluation and extinction are indices of implicit emotion regulation. In Experiment 1, the OD index showed a significant positive correlation with specific PIT and a negative correlation with the NU score. In Experiment 2, the extinction index of specific PIT, linked to the level of explicit knowledge of the contingencies, correlated negatively with NU. The VMAC effect and its persistence showed correlations with NU, positive and negative, respectively (Experiment 1). No relationships were found between any measure of VMAC and OD or PIT effects in any of the experiments. These findings suggest that difficulties in emotion regulation are associated with increased attentional sign-tracking and can hinder action control and selection. These phenomena may be governed by distinct mechanisms, with the VMAC effect being more automatic and the specific PIT effect exhibiting varying degrees of goal-directed behavior depending on the effectiveness of implicit emotion regulation strategies.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13420-025-00676-1.

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