Prioritizing pleasure and pain: attentional capture by reward-related and punishment-related stimuli

Attention is shaped by our prior experiences with stimuli, and in particular by learning about their relationship with motivationally significant events: rewards and punishments. While it is typically adaptive to prioritize detection of signals of reward and punishment, recent evidence suggests that attentional prioritization of motivationally relevant information can be involuntary and inflexible, which can be counterproductive when circumstances change, and these signals are no longer the focus of a person’s goals. We review this literature, which suggests that attentional capture is promoted by learning about both rewards and punishments, though further research is required to probe for differences in the temporal dynamics of these processes. We also highlight the clinical relevance of interactions between appetitive and aversive motivation and perceptual-cognitive processes.