The question of how human performance can be improved through rewards is a recurrent topic of interest in psychology and neuroscience. Traditional, cognitive approaches to this topic have focused solely on consciously communicated rewards. Recently, a largely neuroscience-inspired perspective has emerged to examine the potential role of conscious awareness of reward information in effective reward pursuit. The present article reviews research employing a newly developed monetary-reward-priming paradigm that allows for a systematic investigation of this perspective. We analyze this research to identify similarities and differences in how consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards impact three distinct aspects relevant to performance: decision making, task preparation, and task execution. We further discuss whether conscious awareness, in modulating the effects of reward information, plays a role similar to its role in modulating the effects of other affective information. Implications of these insights for understanding the role of consciousness in modulating goal-directed behavior more generally are discussed. © 2014 Psychonomic Society, Inc.
CITATION STYLE
Zedelius, C. M., Veling, H., Custers, R., Bijleveld, E., Chiew, K. S., & Aarts, H. (2014). A new perspective on human reward research: How consciously and unconsciously perceived reward information influences performance. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience. Springer New York LLC. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-013-0241-z
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