My research investigates the mechanisms by which reward learning changes how we direct our attention in the future. To this end, I have pioneered an approach in which simple, arbitrary stimuli are paired with reward in a training procedure and then appear as task-irrelevant distractors during performance of a subsequent task. I examine how these previously reward-associated stimuli are processed in both healthy participants and in individuals who struggle with addiction and other psychopathologies, using both human behavior and functional neuroimaging. I am also interested in how punishment learning influences subsequent attention, and how we can employ goal-directed attentional control in order to minimize distraction.
