The effect of subliminal incentives on goal-directed eye movements

Abstract

Reward incentives motivate humans to exert more effort, and they do so even when rewards are subconsciously perceived. It has been unknown whether these effects also extend to eye movements that have lower energetic demands compared with other movement types. We devised a behavioral task that required fast execution of multiple eye movements. Subliminal rewards enhanced the frequency and peak velocity of saccadic eye movements, with the most reliable effect observed for saccadic frequency.