Prepulse inhibition (PPI) of startle is greater for attended compared to ignored prestimuli, and, consistent with theories of motivated attention, initial evidence suggests that this effect is greater among participants given performance-based incentives. The present study examined a within-subjects incentive manipulation. Participants (n = 41) completed two blocks of a tone discrimination task. During the incentive block, participants received trialwise feedback with small monetary incentives for task performance. Startle eyeblink EMG responses to auditory probes were assessed at 60-, 120-, and 180-ms tone-probe stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). As predicted, PPI was enhanced during attended compared to ignored prestimuli only at the 120-ms SOA in the incentive condition. There was no evidence of attentional modification in the no-incentive condition. These data suggest that attentional modification of PPI is sensitive to within-subjects manipulations of incentive, providing a useful tool for testing models of motivated attention in psychopathology and psychopharmacology.
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机译:相比于被忽略的预刺激,参加者对惊吓的预脉冲抑制(PPI)更大,并且与动机注意的理论一致,初步证据表明,在基于绩效的奖励措施下,参与者的这种影响更大。本研究研究了受试者内部的激励操纵。参与者(n = 41)完成了两个音调识别任务块。在激励块期间,参与者会收到试验性反馈,并会为任务执行提供少量金钱奖励。在60毫秒,120毫秒和180毫秒的音调刺激发作发作异步(SOA)评估对听觉探针的惊异眨眼EMG反应。如预期的那样,在激励条件下,与仅在120 ms SOA下被忽略的预激励相比,PPI在参会期间得到了增强。没有证据表明在无激励条件下注意力发生了改变。这些数据表明,PPI的注意修饰对受试者内部的激励操纵敏感,为测试心理病理学和心理药理学中的注意动机模型提供了有用的工具。
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