It is known that movements of visual attention are influenced by features in a scene, such as colors, that are associated with value or with loss. The present study examined the detailed nature of these attentional effects by employing the gap paradigm—a technique that has been used to separately reveal changes in attentional capture and shifting, and changes in attentional disengagement. In four experiments, participants either looked toward or away from stimuli with colors that had been associated either with gains or with losses. We found that participants were faster to look to colors associated with gains and slower to look away from them, revealing effects of gains on both attentional capture and attentional disengagement. On the other hand, participants were both slower to look to features associated with loss, and faster to look away from such features. The pattern of results suggested, however, that the latter finding was not due to more rapid disengagement from loss-associated colors, but instead to more rapid shifting of attention away from such colors. Taken together, the results reveal a complex pattern of effects of gains and losses on the disengagement, capture, and shifting of visual attention, revealing a remarkable flexibility of the attention system.

众所周知，视觉注意力的运动受到场景中与价值或损失相关的特征的影响，例如颜色。本研究通过采用间隙范式（一种已用于分别揭示注意力捕获和转移的变化以及注意力脱离的变化的技术）来检查这些注意力效应的详细性质。在四项实验中，参与者要么看向或远离带有与收益或损失相关的颜色的刺激。我们发现参与者更快地看与增益相关的颜色，而将目光移开的速度较慢，揭示了增益对注意力捕获和注意力脱离的影响。另一方面，参与者在寻找与损失相关的特征方面都较慢，并且更快地将目光从这些特征上移开。然而，结果模式表明，后一种发现不是由于更快地脱离与损失相关的颜色，而是由于注意力更迅速地从这些颜色上转移。综上所述，结果揭示了视觉注意力的脱离、捕获和转移的得失影响的复杂模式，揭示了注意力系统的显着灵活性。