An Examination of the Evidence for Pavlovian Conditioning and Information-Seeking Accounts of Value-Modulated(/Driven) Attentional Capture

Research over the last decade has shown that the value associated with a perceptually salient stimulus enhances its ability to attract attention towards itself. This phenomenon, called value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC), has relevance to a wide variety of psychological matters. Thus, an understanding of the conditioning processes that are responsible for VMAC can provide further insight into these matters. Almost all the literature argues that a Pavlovian conditioning process and not an information-seeking process is responsible for VMAC. However, there are grounds to question whether this is always the case. The current article reviewed the empirical research that has been conducted, or could potentially be used, to investigate the learning processes that are responsible for VMAC. It established that much research has been too limited to determine what processes are responsible for VMAC, but much research has not. Specifically, research that has found VMAC arising in its entirety before awareness of the stimulus-value association is acquired and taking place regardless of whether reward information is devalued later in training provides evidence of Pavlovian conditioning. However, research that has found VMAC arising when points feedback is withheld and individuals are informed of the stimulus-value association, and only taking place when reward information is not devalued when information devaluation is manipulated from the start of training, provides evidence of information-seeking. Thus, the findings of the research suggest that either process may give rise to VMAC and that it is the conditions under which VMAC is established that determines what process is responsible for it – Pavlovian conditioning will be responsible for VMAC when information-seeking is precluded, and information-seeking will be responsible for VMAC when Pavlovian conditioning is precluded.