Value-driven Attentional Capture is Stronger for Internal than External Stimuli

Visual stimuli previously associated with reward automatically capture attention when used as distractor, as shown by value-driven attentional capture (VDAC) effects. However, whether or not VDAC can also occur when attention is directed to internal information held in visual memory remains unclear. In two experiments, we compared VDAC for external (i.e., stimulus-driven) vs. internal (i.e., memory-based) information. In Experiment 1 (N=43), participants first learned to associate color with value (i.e., reward). During the test phase, color was used as distractor during a simple visual discrimination task. Results showed that VDAC was stronger for internal than external attention. Moreover, we found that different motivational components of participants’ reward sensitivity accounted for VDAC in internal and external attention. We replicated these findings in Experiment 2 (N=43) where value was not associated with color, but a symbolic cue instead. A hierarchical drift diffusion model further suggested that cognitive control, although counterproductive, could explain VDAC for internal attention in Experiment 1 while it accounted for reward-based distraction for external attention in Experiment 2. Together, our results show that VDAC also occurs when attention is directed to internal representations, and differently than external information. Moreover, they suggest that different components of reward processing could account for VDAC with external vs. internal information.