Eye spy with my little eye: Motivational relevance of visual stimuli guide eye-movements at different processing stages

- Task-irrelevant images were varied in arousal and motivational relevance.
- Eye-movements recorded to a simple “follow the cross” task in 96 participants.
- Arousing, affective images impacted on early temporal and spatial control of saccade.
- Motivationally relevant images specifically predicted later saccade landing position.
- Attention towards motivationally relevant stimuli occurs at different stages.

Visual stimuli may be selected for priority at different stages within the processing stream, depending on how motivationally relevant they are to the perceiver. Here we examine the extent to which individual differences in motivational relevance of task-irrelevant images (spider, crash, baby, food and neutral) guide eye-movements to a simple “follow the cross” task in 96 participants. We found affective images vs. neutral images to be generally more distracting, as shown by faster first saccade latencies and greater deviation in the final landing position from the target cross. The most arousing images (spider and food), compared to neutral images, showed the largest trajectory deviations of the first saccade. Fear of spiders specifically predicted greater deviation in the final landing position on spider images. These results suggest that attentional biases towards arousing and motivationally relevant stimuli may occur at different processing stages.