Sheng Li’s lab combined reward learning and change detection paradigms, and investigated the modulation effect of reward association on visual working memory (VWM). The results revealed improved VWM performance for items with reward-associated color, in a situation where the color was not task relevant. Further experiments demonstrated that the observed reward effect was due to enhanced attentional modulation on the reward-associated color. The findings suggest that, apart from the previously reported space-based attentional capture, the learned reward association can also induce feature-based attentional modulation that influences the processing of related items. The study provides new evidence about how learned reward association impacts cognitive control and adaptive behavior over long time span.

Gong, M., Li, S. (2014) Learned reward association improves visual working memory.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance  40(2): 841-856.