Value-modulated attentional capture depends on awareness

TL;DR

The study shows that awareness of reward associations affects how neutral stimuli capture attention automatically.

Contribution

It reveals that explicit instructions or awareness are needed for value-modulated attentional capture to occur.

Findings

VMAC is absent when participants are not explicitly informed about stimulus-reward associations.

Participants who became aware of the contingencies showed robust VMAC effects.

Meta-analysis confirms that instruction inclusion increases VMAC effects.

Abstract

Value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC) refers to a process by which a priori neutral stimuli gain attentional priority when associated with reward, independently of goal or stimulus-driven attentional control. Although VMAC is considered an automatic and implicit process, the role of awareness of the stimulus-reward contingency on its learning process remains unclear at best. In a well-powered replication of a previous study, we found that VMAC is absent when participants are not explicitly informed about the stimulus-reward contingency in the pre-task instructions. In a second experiment, we show that when instructions are manipulated between groups, only the instructed group shows VMAC. Interestingly, although the no-instruction group did not show VMAC at the group level, participants who became aware of the stimulus-reward contingencies did nevertheless show robust VMAC at the end of the task. Meta-analytic evidence further supports our conclusion by showing that studies that include instructions about the stimulus-reward contingencies yield significantly larger VMAC effects. Taken collectively, these findings suggest that the learning process behind VMAC may not be entirely implicit.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-025-02734-1.

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