ORCID Profile
0000-0001-7454-413X
Current Organisation
University of Technology Sydney
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Biological Psychology (Neuropsychology, Psychopharmacology, Physiological Psychology) | Sensory Processes, Perception and Performance | Psychology
Behaviour and Health | Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences |
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.APPET.2017.10.020
Abstract: People often fail to adhere to food-related health information. Increasing evidence suggests that environmental stimuli interfere with good intentions by triggering choices relatively automatically. Using a Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT) task, we examined whether food-associated stimuli reduce health warnings' effectiveness. We expected that people adhere to health warnings in the absence, but not presence, of food-associated stimuli. In addition, we examined timing effects, i.e., whether health warnings are more effective when they are given prior to associative learning rather than afterwards. In the PIT task, participants learned to press keys for two food rewards (instrumental learning) and associations between stimuli and these rewards (Pavlovian learning) in separated phases. Health warnings about one reward were given after associative learning (Study 1), or before versus afterwards (Study 2). During test phase, participants pressed for food outcomes while occasionally food-related stimuli were presented. In absence of food-related stimuli, participants increased responding for rewards perceived as more healthy. However, when stimuli were present, responding was biased towards the signaled outcome, regardless of health warnings or timing. Health messages influence food choice behavior, but are no longer effective when food-associated stimuli are present. This provides important insights why health warning effects might be limited in an obesogenic environment.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 10-01-2022
DOI: 10.3758/S13414-021-02426-7
Abstract: Existing research demonstrates different ways in which attentional prioritization of salient nontarget stimuli is shaped by prior experience: Reward learning renders signals of high-value outcomes more likely to capture attention than signals of low-value outcomes, whereas statistical learning can produce attentional suppression of the location in which salient distractor items are likely to appear. The current study combined manipulations of the value and location associated with salient distractors in visual search to investigate whether these different effects of selection history operate independently or interact to determine overall attentional prioritization of salient distractors. In Experiment 1, high-value and low-value distractors most frequently appeared in the same location in Experiment 2, high-value and low-value distractors typically appeared in distinct locations. In both experiments, effects of distractor value and location were additive, suggesting that attention-promoting effects of value and attention-suppressing effects of statistical location-learning independently modulate overall attentional priority. Our findings are consistent with a view that sees attention as mediated by a common priority map that receives and integrates separate signals relating to physical salience and value, with signal suppression based on statistical learning determined by physical salience, but not incentive salience.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 04-05-2022
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUBIOREV.2022.104869
Abstract: Habits are the subject of intense international research. Under the associative dual-process model the outcome devaluation paradigm has been used extensively to classify behaviours as being either goal-directed (sensitive to shifts in the value of associated outcomes) or habitual (triggered by stimuli without anticipation of consequences). This has proven to be a useful framework for studying the neurobiology of habit and relevance of habits in clinical psychopathology. However, in recent years issues have been raised about this rather narrow definition of habits in comparison to habitual behaviour experienced in the real world. Specifically, defining habits as the absence of goal-directed control, the very specific set-ups required to demonstrate habit experimentally and the lack of direct evidence for habits as stimulus-response behaviours are viewed as problematic. In this review paper we address key critiques that have been raised about habit research within the framework of the associative dual-process model. We then highlight novel research approaches studying different features of habits with methods that expand beyond traditional paradigms.
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 05-08-2022
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 10-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2013
DOI: 10.1016/J.ADDBEH.2013.08.011
Abstract: One of the characteristics of people suffering from addictive behaviors is the tendency to be distracted by drug cues. This attentional bias for drug cues is thought to lead to increased craving and drug use, and may draw in iduals into a vicious cycle of drug addiction. In the current study we developed a Dutch version of the cannabis Stroop task and measured attentional bias for cannabis words in a group of heavy cannabis users and matched controls. The classical Stroop task was used as a global measure of cognitive control and we examined the relationship between cognitive control, cannabis-related problems, cannabis craving and cannabis attentional bias. Using our version of the cannabis Stroop task, a group of heavy cannabis users showed attentional bias to cannabis words, whereas a control group of non-users did not. Furthermore, within the group of cannabis users, those who were clinically recognized as dependent showed a stronger attentional bias than the heavy, non-dependent users. Cannabis users who displayed reduced cognitive control (as measured with the classical Stroop task) showed increased session-induced craving. Contrary to expectations, however, cognitive control did not appear to modulate the relationship between attentional bias to cannabis words (cannabis Stroop task) and cannabis dependence. This study confirmed the relationship between cannabis dependence and attentional bias and extends this by highlighting a moderating role for cognitive control, which may make some more vulnerable to craving.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 17-11-2021
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 09-11-2022
DOI: 10.1177/17470218211054950
Abstract: Research suggests that aerobic exercise (i.e., exercise aiming to improve cardiovascular fitness) promotes cognition, but the impact on memory specifically, is unclear. There is some evidence to suggest that as little as one session of post-learning exercise benefits memory consolidation. Furthermore, memory may be particularly facilitated by exercise when the in idual is emotionally aroused while encoding stimuli. The current study tested whether exercise after exposure to neutral and emotional images improved memory consolidation of the items among university students. Ninety-nine students were randomly instructed to either exercise or not exercise after viewing a set of images that were positive, neutral, and negative in valence, and they were later tested on their memory. Although emotional images were remembered better than non-emotional images, the results suggested that exercise did not influence this effect or enhance consolidation of the items overall. Explanations and implications for these findings are discussed.
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 17-08-2021
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2021
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2016
Publisher: Society for Neuroscience
Date: 07-2018
DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0240-18.2018
Abstract: “Slips of action” occur in everyday life when we momentarily lose sight of a goal (for ex le, when in a rush or distracted). Associative models propose that these habitual responses can be activated via a direct stimulus-response (S-R) mechanism, regardless of the current hedonic value of the outcome. The slips-of-action task (SOAT) has been extensively used in both healthy and pathological populations to measure habit tendencies, the likelihood of making erroneous responses for devalued outcomes. Inspection of behavioral performance does not reveal, however, whether the impairments were due to impaired goal-directed control or aberrantly strong habit formation. In the current study, we used functional MRI while human participants performed both the instrumental training and SOAT test phases, to elucidate the relative contributions of these mechanisms to performance on the SOAT. On trials in which conflict arises between competing goal-directed and habitual responses, we observed increased activation across areas including the anterior cingulate cortex, paracingulate gyrus, lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), insula, and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Responding for devalued outcomes was related to increased activation in the premotor cortex and cerebellum, implicating these regions in habitual responding. Increased activation in the caudate, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), and frontal pole during training was associated with better performance during the test phase, indicative of goal-directed action control. These results endorse interpretation of the SOAT in terms of competing goal-directed and habitual mechanisms and highlight that cognitive control processes present an additional bottleneck for successful performance on this task.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2023
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 05-2020
DOI: 10.1037/XHP0000728
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-02-2018
Publisher: Society for Neuroscience
Date: 29-08-2012
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1088-12.2012
Abstract: Why are some in iduals more susceptible to the formation of inflexible habits than others? In the present study, we used diffusion tensor imaging to demonstrate that brain connectivity predicts in idual differences in relative goal-directed and habitual behavioral control in humans. Specifically, vulnerability to habitual “slips of action” toward no-longer-rewarding outcomes was predicted by estimated white matter tract strength in the premotor cortex seeded from the posterior putamen (as well as by gray matter density in the posterior putamen as determined with voxel-based morphometry). In contrast, flexible goal-directed action was predicted by estimated tract strength in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex seeded from the caudate. These findings suggest that integrity of dissociable corticostriatal pathways underlies in idual differences in action control in the healthy population, which may ultimately mediate vulnerability to impulse control disorders.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 05-2019
DOI: 10.1037/XLM0000612
Abstract: Studies of visual search demonstrate that the 'learned value' of stimuli (the extent to which they signal valued events, such as rewards and punishments) influences whether they will be prioritized by spatial attention. Recent work suggests that learned value also modulates attentional prioritization even when all stimuli are presented in the same location, suggesting an influence on temporal selection wherein value-related stimuli become more capable of disrupting central mechanisms of perceptual awareness. However, it remains unclear whether temporal selection is influenced specifically by learning about the relationship of stimuli with reward, or with punishment, or both. This question motivated the current experiments. Participants saw a stream of pictures in a central location, and had to identify the orientation of a rotated target picture. In Experiment 1, response accuracy was reduced if the target was preceded by a 'valued' distractor picture that signaled that a correct response to the target would be rewarded, relative to a distractor picture that did not signal reward. In Experiment 2, accuracy was reduced if the valued distractor picture signaled that an incorrect response would be punished, relative to a distractor that did not signal punishment. Experiment 3 replicated these findings, and demonstrated that the influence of rewards unishments persisted into an extinction phase in which valued distractors were entirely task-irrelevant. These findings suggest that it is the motivational significance of the outcome, rather than its valence, that is the crucial determinant of the influence of learned value on temporal selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 08-2020
DOI: 10.1037/XGE0000722
Abstract: Reward-learning theory views habits as stimulus-response links formed through extended reward training. Accordingly, animal research has shown that actions that are initially goal-directed can become habitual after operant overtraining. However, a similar demonstration is absent in human research, which poses a serious problem for translational models of behavior. We propose that response-time (RT) switch cost after operant training can be used as a new, reliable marker for the operation of the habit system in humans. Using a new method, we show that RT switch cost demonstrates the properties that would be expected of a habitual behavior: (a) it increases with overtraining, (b) it increases when rewards are larger, and (c) it increases when time pressure is added to the task, thereby hindering the competing goal-directed system. These results offer a promising new pathway for studying the operation of the habit system in humans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 29-06-2020
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2019
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2014
DOI: 10.1016/J.APPET.2014.04.005
Abstract: Why do we indulge in food-seeking and eating behaviors at times when we are already fully sated? In the present study we investigated the hypothesis that food-associated cues in the environment can interfere with goal-directed action by eliciting food-seeking that is independent of the current desirability of the outcome. To this end, we used a computerized task in which participants learned to press keys for chocolate and popcorn rewards. Subsequently, we investigated whether satiation on one of these rewards would bias choice toward the other, still desirable, food reward. We found that satiation did indeed selectively reduce responding on the associated key in the absence of food-associated cues. In contrast, in a Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT) test, satiation failed to reduce cue-elicited food-seeking: in line with our hypothesis, cues that had previously been paired with chocolate and popcorn led to increased responding for the signaled food reward, independent of satiation. Furthermore, we show that food-associated cues will not only bias choice toward the signaled food (outcome-specific transfer), but also enhance the vigor of responding generally (general transfer). These findings point to a mechanism that may underlie the powerful control that cues in our obesogenic environment exert over our behavior.
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 17-04-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2018
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 19-05-2017
DOI: 10.1111/EJN.13586
Abstract: The present multimodal MRI study advances our understanding of the corticostriatal circuits underlying goal-directed vs. cue-driven, habitual food seeking. To this end, we employed a computerized Pavlovian-instrumental transfer paradigm. During the test phase, participants were free to perform learned instrumental responses (left and right key presses) for popcorn and Smarties outcomes. Importantly, prior to this test half of the participants had been sated on popcorn and the other half on Smarties - resulting in a reduced desirability of those outcomes. Furthermore, during a proportion of the test trials, food-associated Pavlovian cues were presented in the background. In line with previous studies, we found that participants were able to perform in a goal-directed manner in the absence of Pavlovian cues, meaning that specific satiation selectively reduced responding for that food. However, presentation of Pavlovian cues biased choice toward the associated food reward regardless of satiation. Functional MRI analyses revealed that, in the absence of Pavlovian cues, posterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex tracked outcome value. In contrast, during cued trials, the BOLD signal in the posterior putamen differentiated between responses compatible and incompatible with the cue-associated outcome. Furthermore, we identified a region in ventral amygdala showing relatively strong functional connectivity with posterior putamen during the cued trials. Structural MRI analyses provided converging evidence for the involvement of corticostriatal circuits: diffusion tensor imaging data revealed that connectivity of caudate-seeded white-matter tracts to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex predicted responding for still-valuable outcomes and gray matter integrity in the premotor cortex predicted in idual Pavlovian cueing effects.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2021
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 07-2022
Abstract: Attention, the mechanism that prioritizes stimuli in the environment for further processing, plays an important role in behavioral choice. In the present study, we investigated the automatic orienting of attention to cues that signal reward. Such attentional capture occurs despite negative consequences, and we investigated whether this counterproductive and reflexive behavior would persist following outcome devaluation. Thirsty participants completed a visual search task in which the color of a distractor stimulus in the search display signaled whether participants would earn water or potato chips for making a rapid eye movement to a diamond target, but looking at the colored distractor was punished by omission of the signaled reward. Nevertheless, participants looked at the water-signaling distractor more frequently than the chip-signaling distractor. Half the participants then drank water ad libitum before continuing with the visual search task. Although the water was now significantly less desirable for half of the participants, there was no difference between groups in the tendency for the water-signaling distractor to capture attention. These findings suggest that once established, counterproductive attentional bias to signals of reward persists even when those outcomes are no longer valuable. This suggests a “habit-like” attentional mechanism that prioritizes reward stimuli in the environment for further action, regardless of whether those stimuli are aligned with current goals or currently desired.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2021
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 28-09-2021
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 08-03-2021
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2013
DOI: 10.1016/J.VISRES.2012.12.010
Abstract: We direct our attention to those visual stimuli that are relevant to our behavioral goals. Some of the visual stimuli that surround us are represented more strongly, because they have a higher luminance contrast. However, selective attention also boosts the representation of visual stimuli. It is not yet well understood how attention and contrast interact. Some previous theories proposed that attentional effects are strongest at low contrast, others that they are strongest at high contrast and yet others that the effects of selective attention are largely independent of contrast. In the present study, we investigated the interaction between selective attention and luminance contrast with a contour-grouping task that provides a sensitive measure of the spread of object-based attention, with delays of several hundreds of milliseconds. We find that the spread of object-based attention is largely independent of contrast, and that subjects experience little difficulty in grouping low-contrast contour elements in the presence of other contour elements with a much higher contrast. The results imply that object-based attention and contrast have largely independent effects on visual processing.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 24-08-2020
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 22-07-2023
DOI: 10.3758/S13428-022-01922-4
Abstract: The translation of the outcome-devaluation paradigm to study habit in humans has yielded interesting insights but proven to be challenging. We present a novel, outcome-revaluation task with a symmetrical design, in the sense that half of the available outcomes are always valuable and the other half not-valuable. In the present studies, during the instrumental learning phase, participants learned to respond (Go) to certain stimuli to collect valuable outcomes (and points) while refraining to respond (NoGo) to stimuli signaling not-valuable outcomes. Half of the stimuli were short-trained, while the other half were long-trained. Subsequently, in the test phase, the signaled outcomes were either value-congruent with training (still-valuable and still-not-valuable), or value-incongruent (devalued and upvalued). The change in outcome value on value-incongruent trials meant that participants had to flexibly adjust their behavior. At the end of the training phase, participants completed the self-report behavioral automaticity index – providing an automaticity score for each stimulus-response association. We conducted two experiments using this task, that both provided evidence for stimulus-driven habits as reflected in poorer performance on devalued and upvalued trials relative to still-not-valuable trials and still-valuable trials, respectively. While self-reported automaticity increased with longer training, behavioral flexibility was not affected. After extended training (Experiment 2), higher levels of self-reported automaticity when responding to stimuli signaling valuable outcomes were related to more ‘slips of action’ when the associated outcome was subsequently devalued. We conclude that the symmetrical outcome-revaluation task provides a promising paradigm for the experimental investigation of habits in humans.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2019
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2020
DOI: 10.1016/J.COGNITION.2019.104125
Abstract: Attention refers to the set of cognitive mechanisms that facilitate the prioritization of incoming sensory information. Existing research suggests that motivationally salient stimuli, such as those associated with reward, are prioritized by the attention system and that this prioritization occurs independently of an observer's goals. Specifically, studies of visual search have shown that stimuli signalling the availability of monetary reward are more likely to capture eye movements, even when participants are motivated to ignore such stimuli. In the current study we ask whether reward magnitude influences only the likelihood that stimuli will capture spatial attention, or whether reward also influences the ease with which people can disengage attention from a location when they are motivated to move their attention elsewhere. Three experiments examined the time taken to disengage from a centrally presented distractor that signalled the availability of high or low reward. We found that participants took longer to move their eyes away from a high-reward distractor, even though this came at financial cost (Experiment 1), that participants were unable to suppress a high-reward distractor consistently presented at the central location (Experiment 2), that slower responding was not due to behavioural freezing in the presence of a signal of high reward (Experiment 3), and that slower responding persisted even when rewards were no longer available (Experiment 4). These results indicate that reward modulates attentional disengagement: signals of high reward hold attention for longer, even when this is counterproductive for performance of ongoing tasks. Our findings further highlight the role of reward in the conflict between automatic and goal-directed attentional processing.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-07-2019
Abstract: Physically salient but task-irrelevant distractors can capture attention in visual search, but resource-dependent, executive-control processes can help reduce this distraction. However, it is not only physically salient stimuli that grab our attention: Recent research has shown that reward history also influences the likelihood that stimuli will capture attention. Here, we investigated whether resource-dependent control processes modulate the effect of reward on attentional capture, much as for the effect of physical salience. To this end, we used eye tracking with a rewarded visual search task and compared performance under conditions of high and low working memory load. In two experiments, we demonstrated that oculomotor capture by high-reward distractor stimuli is enhanced under high memory load. These results highlight the role of executive-control processes in modulating distraction by reward-related stimuli. Our findings have implications for understanding the neurocognitive processes involved in real-life conditions in which reward-related stimuli may influence behavior, such as addiction.
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 14-05-2020
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 12-12-2019
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 23-06-2022
Abstract: Habits are the subject of intense international research. Under the associative dual-process model the outcome devaluation paradigm has been used extensively to classify behaviours as being either goal-directed (sensitive to shifts in the value of associated outcomes) or habitual (triggered by stimuli without anticipation of consequences). This has proven to be a useful framework for studying the neurobiology of habit and relevance of habits in clinical psychopathology. However, in recent years issues have been raised about this rather narrow definition of habits in comparison to habitual behaviour experienced in the real world. Specifically, defining habits as the absence of goal-directed control, the very specific set-ups required to demonstrate habit experimentally and the lack of direct evidence for habits as stimulus-response behaviours are viewed as problematic. In this review paper we address key critiques that have been raised about habit research within the framework of the associative dual-process model. We then highlight novel research approaches studying different features of habits with methods that expand beyond traditional paradigms.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2016
DOI: 10.1016/J.APPET.2015.10.008
Abstract: Adolescents and children are the targets of much food advertising, the majority of which is for unhealthy snacks. Although the effects of advertising on food preferences and consummatory behavior are well documented, our understanding of the underlying mechanisms is still limited. The present study investigates an associative (ideomotor) mechanism by which exposure to rewarding (snack) outcomes may activate behavior that previously resulted in these rewards. Specifically, we used a computerized task to investigate whether exposing adolescents to food pictures directly, or to Pavlovian cues predictive of those food pictures, would bias their subsequent responses towards the presented/signaled food. Furthermore, we assessed whether this effect was particularly pronounced with palatable, high-calorie snacks (crisps and chocolate) relative to low-calorie snacks (tomatoes and cucumber). In two experiments, adolescents learnt that certain key presses would yield particular food pictures - some high calorie and others low calorie - before learning Pavlovian associations between cues (cartoon monsters) and these same food pictures. Subsequently, in a response-priming test, we examined the extent to which the food pictures and Pavlovian cues spontaneously primed the previously associated response. The results show that we replicated, in adolescents, previous demonstrations of ideomotor response priming in adults: food pictures biased responding towards the response that previously yielded them, and this effect transferred to the Pavlovian cues. Furthermore, the priming effect was significantly stronger for high-calorie rewards than for low-calorie. These findings indicate that the ideomotor mechanism plays an important role in the detrimental effect of our obesogenic environment, with its plethora of unhealthy food reminders, on adolescents' food-related choices.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-1970
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 2012
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 24-09-2020
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 03-02-2019
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAINRES.2015.02.020
Abstract: Ideomotor theory proposes that goal-directed action emerges from the implicit, incidental acquisition of bi-directional associations between actions and their outcomes. In line with this idea, a simple two-stage priming paradigm has provided evidence that presentation of outcomes primes previously associated actions. In the current study we compare the standard priming paradigm with two actions and two unique outcomes (Experiment 1) with two more complex, but otherwise identical versions (Experiment 2: two vs. four actions with four outcomes). Our results show stronger evidence of action-outcome learning in the simple compared to the more complex versions. We suggest that, when using the classic two-stage paradigm, action-outcome acquisition is limited to just a few action-outcome associations that can be concurrently learned-at least if learning is not supported by discriminative stimuli and outcomes are not salient or motivationally relevant. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled SI: Prediction and Attention.
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 26-04-2019
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 2012
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 13-05-2013
DOI: 10.5127/JEP.030512
Abstract: Approach Avoidance tasks measure approach bias, a behavioral tendency to be faster at approaching rather than avoiding drug cues. Approach bias has been measured in a number of different drug-using populations and there is evidence to suggest that approach bias measurements correlate with drug use. Little is known, however, about the motivational mechanisms underlying the approach bias. In the current study we assessed whether the approach bias to cigarettes was immediately sensitive to changes in the incentive value of smoking. We examined the change from baseline in a participant group, after half the group had been given the opportunity to smoke. Specifically, we examined whether the approach bias has the characteristics of a cue-elicited behavior or is flexibly modulated by current desire. Results showed that while the baseline approach-bias score in deprived cigarette smokers correlated with craving, smoking a cigarette led to reduced craving but an increased approach bias score. We discuss a possible account of these findings in terms of an ideomotor outcome-response priming mechanism.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 12-2021
DOI: 10.1037/EMO0001003
Abstract: Recent research has demonstrated a counterproductive attentional bias toward threat-related stimuli: under conditions in which fixating on a color distractor stimulus sometimes resulted in an immediate shock, participants were nevertheless more likely to look at this threat-related distractor than a neutral distractor matched for physical salience. However, participants in that prior research may not have realized that their own actions caused delivery of aversive outcomes, such that monitoring for the threat-related distractor may not have been counterproductive from participants' perspective. In Experiment 1 of the current study, we demonstrate that the attentional bias to the threat-related distractor persists (and indeed, becomes stronger) when participants are made explicitly aware that looking at this stimulus is the sole cause of aversive events, which are otherwise avoidable. In Experiment 2 we replicate the bias in informed participants under conditions in which there is additional (reward-driven) motivation to avoid attending to distractors. Taken together with prior findings, the observation of an attentional bias toward the threat-related distractor under these explicitly counterproductive conditions provides strong support for the idea that threat-related stimuli are automatically prioritized by our attentional system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.DRUGALCDEP.2017.01.041
Abstract: The current study examined whether cognitive control moderates the association between (non-drug) reward-modulated attentional capture and use of alcohol and other drugs (AOD). Participants were 66 university students who completed an assessment including questions about AOD use, a visual search task to measure value-modulated attentional capture, and a goal-directed selective attention task as a measure of cognitive control. The association between the effect of value-modulated attentional capture and illicit drug use was moderated by level of cognitive control. Among participants with lower levels of cognitive control, value-modulated attentional capture was associated with illicit drug use. This was not the case among participants with higher levels of cognitive control, who instead showed a significant association between illicit drug use and self-reported impulsivity, as well as alcohol use. These results provide support for models that view addictive behaviours as resulting from interaction and competition between automatic and more reflective processes. That is, the mechanisms that ultimately drive addictive behaviour may differ between people low or high in cognitive control. This has important implications for understanding the development and maintenance of substance use disorders and potentially their treatment and prevention.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 13-04-2017
Start Date: 07-2020
End Date: 09-2023
Amount: $375,956.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
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