For Praise or Money: The Impact of Different Types of Symbolic Rewards on Selective Attention

Previous research has confirmed the effect of monetary reward on selective attention, but the influence of social reward has yet to be fully investigated. To address this issue, we employed a modified two-rectangle paradigm paired with the monetary incentive delay task or social incentive delay task. In this paradigm, reward cues were implemented symbolically and were not linked to performance-based rewards. In Experiment 1, the relative value of monetary reward diminished object-based attention without affecting space-based attention (SBA). In Experiment 2, the stability of the SBA effect was confirmed, but the elimination of the object-based attention effect due to the relative value of non-verbal social reward was only observed in women. In Experiment 3, we found that verbal social reward resulted in similar effects as monetary reward in Experiment 1 when non-verbal information bias was controlled. The results contribute further evidence to the extended common currency schema and are consistent with the view from prospect theory that relative, context-dependent value can influence early attentional processing across different reward types.