Influence of Reward-Learning on Attentional Orienting Towards Different Facial Expressions

Abstract

Human attention is subject to biases shaped by both evolutionary priorities and learned associations. Attentional biases toward emotional facial expressions, particularly ones that signal threat or affiliation, reflect unique mechanisms for processing affective information. Separately, reward learning leads to value-driven attentional capture (VDAC), which refers to how stimuli with previous reward association become more salient and automatically draw attention. The interplay between these processes is interesting, because both involve affective significance that guide attention. This study, consisting of a training and test phase, investigated whether reward learning influences eye movements to varied facial expressions by impacting the salience of the faces. Additionally, scores of Liebowitz Social Anxety Scale (LSAS), State and Trait Anxiety - Y1 and Beck’s Depression Inventory - II (BDI-II) were collected for analysing their association with the extent of reward learning. The results from the training phase failed to display significant differences in attentional capture across disgust, happy and neutral facial expressions. Moreover, the test phase revealed no significant main effects of reward history or emotional expression on gaze. Likewise, General Linear Models (GLMs) indicated that clinical measures failed to significantly predict the magnitude of reward learning, with one exception – BDI-II scores were a slight, positive predictor of reward-associated distractor interference, suggesting a potential trend where individuals with higher depressive symptoms may show avoidance toward reward-associated stimul. Overall, these findings indicate that even if disgust faces can exert strong attentional capture, establishing persistent reward associations with complex facial stimuli can be methodologically challening. Nevertheless, the study opens up possibilities for further investigating these mechanisms and their potential therapeutic implications in clinical settings.