On the Resilience of Reward Cues Attentional Salience to Reward Devaluation, Time, Incentive Learning, and Contingency Remapping

Previous evidence has shown that after conditioning reward cues may continue to grab attention even when the paired reward is devalued, thus triggering an irrational attentional capture. Here, we investigated whether such persistent cue attentional salience, once established, can be abolished. In Experiment 1, we first confirmed that the cue attentional salience outlasted reward devaluation, and then we found that such persistent capture did not change after an incentive-learning procedure with a devalued reward. In Experiment 2, we showed that the reward cue salience remained unaltered after reward devaluation for at least 1 week. In Experiment 3, we finally succeeded in modifying the cue attentional salience when a new contingency between the cue and the reward was learned, and the reward was not devalued, such that the organism was in a high motivational state. The pattern of results emerging from our study reveals a complex interaction between attention, learning, and motivation, and may help shedding light on the learning mechanisms underlying addiction.