Undeserved Reward but Not Inevitable Loss Biases Attention: Personal Control Moderates Evaluative Attentional Biases in the Additional-Singleton Paradigm

It is important for organisms to notice signals of opportunities (i.e., chances for performance-dependent reward) and dangers (i.e., performance-dependent risks of loss). Attentional biases towards opportunity and danger signals should therefore be functionally valuable. By contrast, the functional value of attentional biases towards signals of performance-independent (i.e., uncontrollable) rewards or losses is not obvious. The present study compares attentional biases towards positive and negative stimuli, depending on whether the stimuli signal performance-dependent or performance-independent reward or loss. Specifically, we induced colour-valence associations before engaging participants in an additional-singleton task that measures attentional bias. In the valence-induction phase, one colour signalled a potential reward, and another colour signalled a potential loss; importantly, in one group, rewards and losses were performance-dependent, whereas in another group, they were performance-independent (i.e., seemingly random). In the subsequent additional-singleton task, we found increased additional-singleton effects for colours associated with performance-dependent rewards and losses (i.e., opportunities and dangers). If, however, rewards and losses were performance-independent, the singleton effect was enhanced only for reward but not loss stimuli.