Value-driven attentional capture under load: an ERP study

International audienceReward-associated stimuli have been proposed to automatically attract attention, a phenomenon known as“value-driven attentional capture” (VDAC). However, onlya few studies have investigated whether attentional control could counteract VDAC. We examined VDAC under asituation known to reduce or eliminate distraction by salient and emotionally negative irrelevant stimuli: high perceptual load. We measured the electrophysiological signatures of attentional selection and suppression (the N2pcand Pd components) for low- and high-reward distractors under low- and high-load conditions. Under low-load, distraction was greater for high- rather than low-reward distractors and high-reward distractors only evoked an N2pc.Under high-load, distraction was abolished for low-rewarddistractors, but merely reduced for high-reward distractors, and low- but not high-reward distractors evoked a Pdcomponent. Those results help understanding how perceptual load interacts with reward to determine whether ornot a reward-associated irrelevant stimulus will cause distraction