The role of associative reward learning in guiding feature-based attention and spatial attention is well established. However, no studies have looked at the extent to which reward learning can modulate the direction of saccades during visual search. Here, we introduced a novel reward learning paradigm to examine whether reward-associated directions of eye movements can modulate performance in different visual search tasks. Participants had to fixate a peripheral target before fixating one of four disks that subsequently appeared in each cardinal position. This was followed by reward feedback contingent upon the direction chosen, where one direction consistently yielded a high reward. Thus, reward was tied to the direction of saccades rather than the absolute location of the stimulus fixated. Participants selected the target in the high-value direction on the majority of trials, demonstrating robust learning of the task contingencies. In an untimed visual foraging task that followed, which was performed in extinction, initial saccades were reliably biased in the previously rewarded-associated direction. In a second experiment, following the same training procedure, eye movements in the previously high-value direction were facilitated in a saccade-to-target task. Our findings suggest that rewarding directional eye movements biases oculomotor search patterns in a manner that is robust to extinction and generalizes across stimuli and task.

中文翻译：

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奖励学习偏向扫视的方向。

联想奖励学习在引导基于特征的注意力和空间注意力方面的作用已得到很好的确立。但是，还没有研究关注奖励学习在视觉搜索过程中可以调节扫视方向的程度。在这里，我们介绍了一种新颖的奖励学习范例，以检查与奖励运动相关的眼球运动方向是否可以调节不同视觉搜索任务中的性能。在固定随后出现在每个基本位置的四个圆盘之一之前，参与者必须固定外围目标。其次是取决于所选方向的奖励反馈，其中一个方向始终产生较高的奖励。因此，奖励关系到扫视的方向，而不是固定的刺激的绝对位置。在大多数试验中，参与者都选择了高价值方向的目标，这表明他们对任务的偶然性有很强的学习能力。在随后的一项无定时的视觉觅食任务中，该任务在灭绝中得以执行，最初的扫视被可靠地偏向了先前奖励相关的方向。在第二个实验中，遵循相同的训练过程，从扫视到目标的任务促进了眼前沿高价值方向的运动。我们的研究结果表明，奖励性定向眼球运动可以使动眼搜索模式产生偏见，从而使其在灭绝过程中变得强大，并在刺激和任务中普遍存在。最初的扫视被可靠地偏向先前的奖励关联方向。在第二个实验中，遵循相同的训练过程，从扫视到目标的任务促进了眼前沿高价值方向的运动。我们的研究结果表明，奖励性定向眼球运动可以使动眼搜索模式产生偏向，这种模式对灭绝具有鲁棒性，并且在刺激和任务中普遍存在。最初的扫视被可靠地偏向先前的奖励关联方向。在第二个实验中，遵循相同的训练过程，从扫视到目标的任务促进了眼前沿高价值方向的运动。我们的研究结果表明，奖励性定向眼球运动可以使动眼搜索模式产生偏见，从而使其在灭绝过程中变得强大，并在刺激和任务中普遍存在。