Demonstrations of information-seeking behaviour suggest that attention often acts in an exploitative way, prioritising stimuli that provide diagnostic information about upcoming events over stimuli associated with uncertainty. However, recent evidence from studies of attentional capture in visual search show an opposite pattern: automatic prioritisation of items associated with reward uncertainty over diagnostic stimuli. We hypothesise that this uncertainty-modulated attentional capture (UMAC) effect reflects 'attention for learning': that is, exploration of potential sources of new information. Here we investigated whether UMAC arises because immediate provision of reward feedback in prior studies rendered advance information redundant, attenuating exploitation of diagnostic items and promoting exploration. Accordingly, increasing the duration of anticipated uncertainty (and hence the value of advance information that allows us to escape uncertainty earlier) should promote prioritisation of diagnostic cues and lead to patterns of attentional exploitation. In two eye-tracking experiments, we compared attentional capture by a cue providing diagnostic reward information and a cue signalling uncertain reward, while manipulating the delay between response and feedback (i.e., the duration of anticipated uncertainty that advance information could forestall). We found a UMAC effect in all conditions: regardless of response-feedback delay, uncertain stimuli were more likely to capture attention than diagnostic stimuli. These results suggest that prioritisation of uncertainty is a robust pattern of behaviour in this task. Synthesising current and previous findings, we suggest that different modes of attentional information-seeking may reflect qualitative task differences, with exploration operating at an implicit, automatic level, and exploitation resulting from top-down, volitional processes.

Uncertainty is an expected feature of everyday life, however maladaptive responses to uncertainty are increasingly recognised as a transdiagnostic feature across many mental health conditions. An important consideration is how we prioritise and gather information about uncertain stimuli or situations (Gottlieb, 2023), where attention serves as a primary gateway for this process. In particular, it has been queried whether, and to what extent, attentional prioritisation or neglect of uncertainty is associated with risk for psychopathology (Gottlieb, 2023; Pearson et al., 2024). One possibility is that attentional bias to uncertainty represents a mechanism involved in the intolerance of uncertainty (IU), which is recognised as a general vulnerability factor and maintaining factor across different psychiatric disorders (Bottesi et al., 2020 ; Shihata et al., 2016). This paper will review evidence for relationships between attentional bias to uncertainty and psychopathology.

It is often argued that increased "attentional bias to threat" in anxiety is due to delayed attentional disengagement from threat stimuli, rather than increased attentional orienting towards such signals. In 2013, [Clarke, P. J. F., Macleod, C., & Guastella, A. J. (2013). Assessing the role of spatial engagement and disengagement of attention in anxiety-linked attentional bias: A critique of current paradigms and suggestions for future research directions. Anxiety, Stress and Coping: An International Journal, 26(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2011.638054] critiqued this literature, pointing out that most studies used paradigms that could not isolate attentional disengagement from attentional orienting. Since this critique, over fifty studies claiming to measure attentional disengagement from threat in anxiety have been published, many using suboptimal methods. In this (preregistered) systematic review and meta-analysis, we outline why many of these paradigms fail to provide a valid measure of attentional disengagement from stimuli with different emotional content. We also highlight studies where the paradigms and task parameters allowed for the valid measurement of attentional disengagement and include a meta-analysis (759 participants) of this subset. Some evidence was observed for slowed disengagement from threat images (relative to neutral) in high-anxious individuals, but heterogeneity across studies was high, and the effect disappeared when restricting the analysis to paradigms that could rule out behavioural freezing as an alternative explanation. Overall, these findings highlight the need for better-quality research in this area and suggest best practices for the field moving forward.

BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS:Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are hypothesized to result from failures in corollary discharge mechanisms to correctly predict self-initiated inner speech. However, the role of motor preparation in inner speech, during which sensorimotor predictions are formed, remains unclear. This study aimed to test the hypothesis by examining the relationship between AVH and an electrophysiological marker of action preparation: the contingent negative variation (CNV). STUDY DESIGN:Participants completed an electroencephalographic paradigm. In the Active condition, they imagined an inner syllable at a cued moment coinciding with the presentation of an audible syllable. In the Passive condition, participants passively listened to audible syllables. The amplitude of the late CNV preceding inner speech production was compared with that associated with passive listening across 3 groups: (1) schizophrenia spectrum patients with current AVH (SZAVH+, n = 58), (2) schizophrenia spectrum patients without current AVH (SZAVH-, n = 50), and (3) healthy controls (HC, n = 49). STUDY RESULTS:The HC group showed a more negative late CNV in the Active condition compared with the Passive condition. In contrast, the SZAVH+ and SZAVH- groups showed positive-going slow cortical potentials in both conditions, with less positivity in the Active condition in the former. This pattern significantly predicted AVH status. CONCLUSIONS:These findings provide evidence of motor preparation dysfunction during inner speech in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The distinct pattern of deficits observed in hallucinators may reflect imprecise corollary discharges theorized to underlie some AVH. Premovement neural indices may provide a novel window into abnormalities in prediction formation.

BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS:Auditory-verbal hallucinations (AVH)-the experience of hearing voices in the absence of auditory stimulation-are a cardinal psychotic feature of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. It has long been suggested that some AVH may reflect the misperception of inner speech as external voices due to a failure of corollary-discharge-related mechanisms. We aimed to test this hypothesis with an electrophysiological marker of inner speech. STUDY DESIGN:Participants produced an inner syllable at a precisely specified time, when an audible syllable was concurrently presented. The inner syllable either matched or mismatched the content of the audible syllable. In the passive condition, participants did not produce an inner syllable. We compared the amplitude of the N1, P2, and P3-components of the auditory-evoked potential between: (1) schizophrenia-spectrum patients with current AVH (SZAVH+, n = 55), (2) schizophrenia-spectrum patients without current AVH (SZAVH-, n = 44), (3) healthy controls (HC, n = 43). STUDY RESULTS:The HC group showed reduced N1-amplitude in the Match condition (relative to Passive and Mismatch), replicating our previous results. In contrast, the SZAVH+ group showed the opposite effect: enhanced N1-amplitude in the Match condition (relative to Passive and Mismatch). The SZAVH- group showed reductions in the Mismatch condition (relative to Passive and Match). CONCLUSIONS:This study provides empirical support for the theory that AVH are related to abnormalities in the normative suppressive mechanisms associated with inner speech. This phenomenon of "inner speaking-induced suppression" may have utility as a biomarker for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders generally, and may index a tendency for AVH specifically at more extreme levels of abnormality.

Reward-signalling stimuli capture attention and gaze—a phenomenon known as value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC). Prior work in which there is initially an instrumental relationship between attending to the reward-associated stimulus and receiving reward has shown that VMAC is context-specific. However, it is unclear whether VMAC remains context-specific when attending to the reward-associated stimulus is never a requirement of the task (i.e., stimuli have only a Pavlovian relationship with reward). Across three experiments, participants made saccades to a target shape to earn reward. Coloured distractors signalled different reward values depending on background context images, but making a saccade to the reward-signalling distractors caused the omission of reward. Unlike the context-specific biases observed previously, we found that VMAC trained under these conditions readily generalised across contexts: distractors that signalled high-value reward in one context captured attention in the high-value context, as well as in contexts where they signalled low reward, and in novel contexts. This pattern of context-independent capture occurred despite participants reporting explicit awareness of the context-stimulus-reward contingencies. These findings suggest fundamental differences in the way that Pavlovian and instrumental reward learning mechanisms interact with attentional control. We propose a dual-pathway account, where Pavlovian stimulus-reward relationships result in context-independent increases in attentional priority, while instrumental stimulus-reward relationships trigger context-dependent activation of target templates. Understanding these distinct pathways has important implications for theories of attention and for addressing maladaptive reward-related attentional biases in clinical populations.

Demonstrations of information-seeking behaviour suggest that attention often acts in an exploitative way, prioritising stimuli that provide diagnostic information about upcoming events over stimuli associated with uncertainty. However, recent evidence from studies of attentional capture in visual search show an opposite pattern: automatic prioritisation of items associated with reward uncertainty over diagnostic stimuli. We hypothesise that this uncertainty-modulated attentional capture (UMAC) effect reflects ‘attention for learning’: that is, exploration of potential sources of new information. Here we investigated whether UMAC arises because immediate provision of reward feedback in prior studies rendered advance information redundant, attenuating exploitation of diagnostic items and promoting exploration. Accordingly, increasing the duration of anticipated uncertainty (and hence the value of advance information that allows us to escape uncertainty earlier) should promote prioritisation of diagnostic cues and lead to patterns of attentional exploitation. In two eye-tracking experiments, we compared attentional capture by a cue providing diagnostic reward information and a cue signalling uncertain reward, while manipulating the delay between response and feedback (i.e., the duration of anticipated uncertainty that advance information could forestall). We found a UMAC effect in all conditions: regardless of response–feedback delay, uncertain stimuli were more likely to capture attention than diagnostic stimuli. These results suggest that prioritisation of uncertainty is a robust pattern of behaviour in this task. Synthesising current and previous findings, we suggest that different modes of attentional information-seeking may reflect qualitative task differences, with exploration operating at an implicit, automatic level, and exploitation resulting from top-down, volitional processes.

Previous research has demonstrated that attentional prioritization is shaped by prior experience of reward uncertainty: Attention is more likely to be captured by a stimulus associated with a variable (uncertain) reward than a stimulus that provides diagnostic information about available reward. This finding is noteworthy, because it runs counter to the principle that cognition is motivated to reduce uncertainty and hence surprise. Here we investigated whether this pattern of uncertainty-modulated attentional capture (UMAC) reflects a process of attention for learning, wherein uncertainty-related stimuli are prioritized in an attempt to learn about their true predictive status. To address this, we examined the distinct impact of two information sources that modulate potential for learning: explicit instruction versus ongoing experience of prediction error in reward feedback. Experiment 1 demonstrated that providing explicit instructions-and hence negating the need for further learning-did not reduce the magnitude of the UMAC effect, indicating that UMAC does not reflect attention for learning as a strategic approach for determining the task state. On the other hand, Experiment 2 showed that instructions alone were insufficient to generate a UMAC effect in the absence of reward feedback, suggesting that the impact of uncertainty on rapid attentional prioritization is driven by direct experience of prediction error. Taken together, these findings point to two possibilities: UMAC may reflect attention for learning operating at an implicit level or may evince an attentional system that is configured for rapid detection of sources of experienced uncertainty so that subsequent behavior can be tailored appropriately.

Our prior experiences shape the way that we prioritize information from the environment for further processing, analysis, and action. We show in three experiments that this process of attentional prioritization is critically modulated by the degree of uncertainty in these previous experiences. Participants completed a visual search task in which they made a saccade to a target to earn a monetary reward. The color of a color-singleton distractor in the search array signaled the reward outcome(s) that were available, with different degrees of variance (uncertainty). Participants were never required to look at the colored distractor, and doing so would slow their response to the target. Nevertheless, across all experiments, participants were more likely to look at distractors associated with high outcome variance versus low outcome variance. This pattern was observed when all distractors had equal expected value (Experiment 1), when the difference in variance was opposed by a difference in expected value (i.e., the high-variance distractor had a low expected value, and vice versa: Experiment 2), and when high- and low-variance distractors were paired with the maximum-value outcome on an equal proportion of trials (Experiment 3). Our findings demonstrate that experience of prediction error plays a fundamental role in guiding "attentional exploration," wherein priority is driven by the potential for a stimulus to reduce future uncertainty through a process of learning, as opposed to maximizing current information gain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Attentional prioritisation of stimuli in the environment plays an important role in overt choice. Previous research shows that prioritisation is influenced by the magnitude of paired rewards, in that stimuli signalling high-value rewards are more likely to capture attention than stimuli signalling low-value rewards; and this attentional bias has been proposed to play a role in addictive and compulsive behaviours. A separate line of research has shown that win-related sensory cues can bias overt choices. However, the role that these cues play in attentional selection is yet to be investigated. Participants in this study completed a visual search task in which they responded to a target shape in order to earn reward. The colour of a distractor signalled the magnitude of reward and type of feedback on each trial. Participants were slower to respond to the target when the distractor signalled high reward compared to when the distractor signalled low reward, suggesting that the high-reward distractors had increased attentional priority. Critically, the magnitude of this reward-related attentional bias was further increased for a high-reward distractor with post-trial feedback accompanied by win-related sensory cues. Participants also demonstrated an overt choice preference for the distractor that was associated with win-related sensory cues. These findings demonstrate that stimuli paired with win-related sensory cues are prioritised by the attention system over stimuli with equivalent physical salience and learned value. This attentional prioritisation may have downstream implications for overt choices, especially in gambling contexts where win-related sensory cues are common.

Rapid attentional capture is shaped by experiences of reward uncertainty: in a visual search task, distractor stimuli that signal uncertain rewards are more likely to capture attention than stimuli that provide diagnostic information about upcoming reward. This pattern of uncertainty-modulated attentional capture (UMAC) runs counter to claims that information-seeking—the drive to identify and exploit sources of predictive information—represents a primary driver of attentional prioritisation. We investigated the possibility that failure to find evidence of information-seeking in prior studies of UMAC was a consequence of immediate provision of reward feedback, negating the value of advance information. In two experiments, we used eye-tracking to examine whether increasing the duration of uncertainty (and hence the potential value of advance information) would promote a pattern of information-seeking in attentional capture. Experiment 1 revealed a general effect of response–feedback delay on the likelihood of capture by salient distractors, but no effect on prioritisation of information: regardless of delay, participants prioritised the noninformative distractor over the informative distractor. Experiment 2 found a similar pattern regardless of whether the delay occurred before or after reward feedback. These findings challenge the idea that information-seeking represents a universal drive for attention, and instead support the idea that—under some conditions—prioritisation can reflect the operation of an ‘attentional exploration’ process that acts to highlight the unknown.

Motivationally salient stimuli, such as those associated with reward, can automatically gain attentional prioritisation - even when individuals are motivated to ignore such stimuli. This 'attentional bias for reward' has often been interpreted as evidence for involuntary Pavlovian 'sign tracking' behaviour. The prioritisation of reward-signalling distractors may additionally reflect a drive to gain information about the state of the world, irrespective of the particular reward that is being signalled. In the current study we assessed whether forewarning participants on each trial as to the upcoming features of a distractor would reduce reward-related attentional capture. This manipulation reduces the information provided by the distractor, without affecting the magnitude of the signalled reward. Using eye tracking in Experiment 1, we found that reward-related attentional capture was virtually eliminated when participants were informed of the upcoming distractor colour (relative to the baseline condition when no information was provided). In Experiment 2, using a response-time version of the task, we again found a significant reduction in reward-related attentional capture when participants received information about the colour of an upcoming distractor, or information about the value of the upcoming reward. Finally, in Experiment 3 we assessed whether participants were using the pre-trial information to strategically inhibit attention to the upcoming distractor colour. The results of these experiments are discussed within the context of information-seeking accounts of reward-related attentional capture effects.

Previous research has demonstrated that attentional prioritisation is shaped by prior experience of reward uncertainty: attention is more likely to be captured by a stimulus associated with a variable (uncertain) reward than a stimulus that provides diagnostic information about available reward. This finding is noteworthy, because it runs counter to the principle that cognition is motivated to reduce uncertainty and hence surprise. Here we investigated whether this pattern of uncertainty-modulated attentional capture (UMAC) reflects a process of attention for learning, wherein uncertainty-related stimuli are prioritised in an attempt to learn about their true predictive status. To address this, we examined the distinct impact of two information sources that modulate potential for learning; explicit instruction versus ongoing experience of prediction error in reward feedback. Experiment 1 demonstrated that providing explicit instructions—and hence negating the need for further learning—did not reduce the magnitude of the UMAC effect, indicating that UMAC does not reflect attention for learning as a strategic approach for determining the task state. On the other hand, Experiment 2 showed that instructions alone were insufficient to generate a UMAC effect in the absence of reward feedback, suggesting that the impact of uncertainty on rapid attentional prioritisation is driven by direct experience of prediction error. Taken together, these findings point to two possibilities: UMAC may reflect attention for learning operating at an implicit level, or may evince an attentional system that is configured for rapid detection of sources of experienced uncertainty so that subsequent behaviour can be tailored appropriately.

Previous research has shown that attentional priority is influenced by prior learning about reward magnitude: signals of high reward value are more likely to capture attention (and gaze) than signals of low reward value. We show in three experiments that attentional priority is also modulated by the uncertainty associated with that reward. Participants completed a visual search task in which they had to make a saccade to a target shape to earn monetary reward. The colour of a colour-singleton distractor in the search array signalled the reward outcome(s) that were available, with different distractor colours being associated with different degrees of variance and expected value in reward outcome. Participants were never required to look at the coloured distractor, and doing so would slow their response to the target. Nevertheless, participants often made eye-movements towards the distractor, and across all experiments they were more likely to look at distractors associated with high outcome variance versus low outcome variance. This pattern was observed when all distractors had equal expected value (Experiment 1), when the difference in variance was opposed by a difference in expected value (i.e., the high-variance distractor had low expected value, and vice versa: Experiment 2), and when distractors were matched for their association with the maximum value outcome (Experiment 3). Our results suggest that outcome variance plays a critical role in modulating rapid attentional and oculomotor priority. More generally, these findings challenge theoretical accounts arguing that the attentional priority of a stimulus is driven by its ability to resolve current uncertainty, and suggest instead that priority is driven by the potential for a stimulus to reduce future uncertainty through a process of learning.

Self-generated overt actions are preceded by a slow negativity as measured by electroencephalogram, which has been associated with motor preparation. Recent studies have shown that this neural activity is modulated by the predictability of action outcomes. It is unclear whether inner speech is also preceded by a motor-related negativity and influenced by the same factor. In three experiments, we compared the contingent negative variation elicited in a cue paradigm in an active vs. passive condition. In Experiment 1, participants produced an inner phoneme, at which an audible phoneme whose identity was unpredictable was concurrently presented. We found that while passive listening elicited a late contingent negative variation, inner speech production generated a more negative late contingent negative variation. In Experiment 2, the same pattern of results was found when participants were instead asked to overtly vocalize the phoneme. In Experiment 3, the identity of the audible phoneme was made predictable by establishing probabilistic expectations. We observed a smaller late contingent negative variation in the inner speech condition when the identity of the audible phoneme was predictable, but not in the passive condition. These findings suggest that inner speech is associated with motor preparatory activity that may also represent the predicted action-effects of covert actions.

Previous research has shown that capture of visual attention is influenced by prior learning about reward: signals of high reward value are more likely to capture attention (and gaze) than signals of low reward value. In the current study, we show in a series of experiments that attentional priority is modulated not only by reward magnitude, but also by the uncertainty associated with that reward. Participants completed a visual search task in which they were required to make an eye movement to a target shape to earn monetary reward. The color of a color-singleton distractor in the search array signaled the reward outcome(s) that were available. Different distractor colors were associated with different degrees of variance and/or expected value in reward outcome. Notably, participants were never required to look at the colored distractor, and doing so would slow their response to the target. Nevertheless participants often made eye-movements towards the distractor, and across all experiments they were more likely to look at distractors associated with high outcome variance versus low outcome variance. This pattern was observed when all distractors had equal expected value (Experiment 1), and when the difference in variance was opposed by a substantial difference in expected value (i.e., the high-variance distractor had low expected value, and vice versa: Experiments 2 and 3). Our results suggest that reward variance – specifically, and independently of other uncertainty-related effects pertaining to outcome entropy and occurrence of "extreme outcomes" – exerts a critical role in modulating rapid attentional and oculomotor priority. More generally, these findings are consistent with theoretical accounts that propose an information-seeking role for visual attention, and suggest that prioritization in line with "attentional exploration" can operate rapidly and on a learned basis.

Erythropoiesis is a committed process by which erythroid progenitors become mature red blood cells (RBCs). Reticulocytes are terminal-staged, immature RBCs which contain selected residual RNA after enucleation. Normally, reticulocytes are efficiently processed and typically represent a small percentage of cells in human peripheral blood. In contrast, when differentiated from iPS or CD34+ hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells in vitro, erythroid cells tend to arrest at the reticulocyte stage. This is the major bottleneck for the complete recapitulation of erythropoiesis in vitro, and a hindrance to modeling hemoglobinopathies in cell cultures. Recent studies have highlighted that uridylation by Terminal Uridylyl Transferases (TUTases 7/4, official names are ZCCHC6/11) occurs on a broad spectrum of RNA classes in mammalian cells. Oligo-uridylated RNA is then recognized by exoribonucleases and targeted for decay. We posited that this is the machinery behind RNA degradation that accompanies terminal erythropoiesis. Utilizing both constitutional and erythroid-specific conditional murine knockout models, we found that blood from TUTase Zcchc6 RNA editor knockout embryos indeed exhibit reticulocytosis with a terminal maturation defect, as documented by FACS, histology, and hematological profiling. Murine strains deficient in the downstream exonuclease, Dis3l2, phenocopied the RNA decay defect of the Zcchc6 KO. Furthermore, knockout models did not show signs of hemolysis suggesting a cell intrinsic and niche-independent role for the TUTase7-Dis3l2 axis in promoting red blood cell maturation. Modulating the expression of this axis holds promise for enhancing in vitro erythropoiesis and modeling of hemoglobinopathies. Future mechanism studies will also reveal a post-transcriptional regulatory machinery governing maturation from reticulocytes to erythrocytes. Erythropoiesis is a committed process by which erythroid progenitors become mature red blood cells (RBCs). Reticulocytes are terminal-staged, immature RBCs which contain selected residual RNA after enucleation. Normally, reticulocytes are efficiently processed and typically represent a small percentage of cells in human peripheral blood. In contrast, when differentiated from iPS or CD34+ hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells in vitro, erythroid cells tend to arrest at the reticulocyte stage. This is the major bottleneck for the complete recapitulation of erythropoiesis in vitro, and a hindrance to modeling hemoglobinopathies in cell cultures. Recent studies have highlighted that uridylation by Terminal Uridylyl Transferases (TUTases 7/4, official names are ZCCHC6/11) occurs on a broad spectrum of RNA classes in mammalian cells. Oligo-uridylated RNA is then recognized by exoribonucleases and targeted for decay. We posited that this is the machinery behind RNA degradation that accompanies terminal erythropoiesis. Utilizing both constitutional and erythroid-specific conditional murine knockout models, we found that blood from TUTase Zcchc6 RNA editor knockout embryos indeed exhibit reticulocytosis with a terminal maturation defect, as documented by FACS, histology, and hematological profiling. Murine strains deficient in the downstream exonuclease, Dis3l2, phenocopied the RNA decay defect of the Zcchc6 KO. Furthermore, knockout models did not show signs of hemolysis suggesting a cell intrinsic and niche-independent role for the TUTase7-Dis3l2 axis in promoting red blood cell maturation. Modulating the expression of this axis holds promise for enhancing in vitro erythropoiesis and modeling of hemoglobinopathies. Future mechanism studies will also reveal a post-transcriptional regulatory machinery governing maturation from reticulocytes to erythrocytes.

The phenomenon of sensory self-suppression - also known as sensory attenuation - occurs when a person generates a perceptible stimulus (such as a sound) by performing an action (such as speaking). The sensorimotor control system is thought to actively predict and then suppress the vocal sound in the course of speaking, resulting in lowered cortical responsiveness when speaking than when passively listening to an identical sound. It has been hypothesized that auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia result from a reduction in self-suppression due to a disruption of predictive mechanisms required to anticipate and suppress a specific, self-generated sound. It has further been hypothesized that this suppression is evident primarily in theta band activity. Fifty-one people, half of whom had a diagnosis of schizophrenia, were asked to repeatedly utter a single syllable, which was played back to them concurrently over headphones while EEG was continuously recorded. In other conditions, recordings of the same spoken syllables were played back to participants while they passively listened, or were played back with their onsets preceded by a visual cue. All participants experienced these conditions with their voice artificially shifted in pitch and also with their unaltered voice. Suppression was measured using event-related potentials (N1 component), theta phase coherence and power. We found that suppression was generally reduced on all metrics in the patient sample, and when voice alteration was applied. We additionally observed reduced theta coherence and power in the patient sample across all conditions. Visual cueing affected theta coherence only. In aggregate, the results suggest that sensory self-suppression of theta power and coherence is disrupted in schizophrenia.

Attention, the mechanism that prioritizes stimuli in the environment for further processing, plays an important role in behavioral choice. In the present study, we investigated the automatic orienting of attention to cues that signal reward. Such attentional capture occurs despite negative consequences, and we investigated whether this counterproductive and reflexive behavior would persist following outcome devaluation. Thirsty participants completed a visual search task in which the color of a distractor stimulus in the search display signaled whether participants would earn water or potato chips for making a rapid eye movement to a diamond target, but looking at the colored distractor was punished by omission of the signaled reward. Nevertheless, participants looked at the water-signaling distractor more frequently than the chip-signaling distractor. Half the participants then drank water ad libitum before continuing with the visual search task. Although the water was now significantly less desirable for half of the participants, there was no difference between groups in the tendency for the water-signaling distractor to capture attention. These findings suggest that once established, counterproductive attentional bias to signals of reward persists even when those outcomes are no longer valuable. This suggests a "habit-like" attentional mechanism that prioritizes reward stimuli in the environment for further action, regardless of whether those stimuli are aligned with current goals or currently desired.