Within-Subject manipulations of proactive control do not change negative templates benefits: Exploring the effect of reward on negative and positive cues

Negative templates come from foreknowledge of distractor-features and lead to improved performance during visual search. Recent studies have better characterized the mechanisms underlying these benefits, by showing a critical role of proactive control mechanisms in negative template use. The goal of this study was to test if state-based fluctuations of proactive control play a role in the use of negative templates. To do so, we engaged participants on a visual search task. We used motivation (e.g. rewards) to induce within-individual fluctuations of proactive control efficiency. We replicated previous findings for the positive templates, with faster RT to find the target during periods of high- compared to low-reward conditions. Interestingly, for negative templates, we failed to find evidence for an effect of motivation on the use of negative templates, even when a motivation condition led to faster RTs. Taken together, these results bring new evidence that using negative templates is not modulated by within-individual fluctuations of proactive engagement and are likely more related to trait-based aspects of an individual's ability to engage proactive control efficiently.