Not All Benefits Are Equal: Incentives to seek reward and avoid penalty improve sustained attention

Sustained attention is notoriously difficult to maintain over time, with attentional lapses emerging rapidly during prolonged tasks. Motivation has been identified as a key factor in reducing these lapses and enhancing task engagement. According to recent accounts such as the goal competition hypothesis, the perceived benefit associated with a goal helps sustain its active representation in working memory. These benefits can arise from the prospect of gaining a reward, avoiding a penalty, or both. However, it remains unclear whether avoiding a penalty—or the combination of penalty and reward— improved sustained goal maintenance to the same extent as pursuing a reward alone. To address this question, we recruited 30 participants to complete a Continuous Performance Task (CPT) in which the type of benefit associated with the goal varied every 20 trials (reward, penalty, both, or no benefit). Replicating prior findings, we observed that rewards reduced attentional lapses compared to a no-benefit baseline. Avoiding penalties and combining both incentives also improved sustained attention, though the penalty condition was less effective than the combined condition. This suggests that while any perceived benefit can support goal maintenance, the motivational mechanisms may differ depending on the type of benefit—particularly when avoiding penalties alone.