The effect of performance contingent reward prospects flexibly adapts to more versus less specific task goals.

ABSTRACT: In some situations, for example, when we expect to gain a reward in case of good performance, goal-driven top-down attention is particularly strong. Little is known about the task specificity of such increases of top-down attention due to environmental factors. To understand to what extent performance-contingent reward prospects can result in specific and unspecific changes in cognitive processing, we here investigate reward effects under different levels of task specification. Thirty-two participants performed a visual or an auditory discrimination task cued by two consecutive visual stimuli: First, a reward cue indicated if good performance was rewarded. Second, a task cue announced either which of the two tasks would follow (precise cue) or that both tasks would follow equally likely (i

SUBMITTER: Liegel N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11579227 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature