Environmental cues to optimal decisions abound. Some are highly predictive and immediately transparent (e.g., amounts) whereas others may either be harder to discern or take time to obtain (e.g., probability and delay). In the present experiment, we manipulated the availability of a particularly salient, and thus dominant, cue regarding when a participant should cash-in when an outcome’s value is increasing over time – a target cube’s size grew as its value grew. For some targets, this expanding cube cue was visible but for others it was not. In contrast, a highly predictive but less obviously relevant color cue was omnipresent, and the recent delay-reward relationship also signaled the reward dynamics. The research addressed a simple question: would more training with transparent targets that reveal the dominant cue produce greater sensitivity to a changing contingency or would more training with opaque targets produce greater sensitivity? Participants’ contingency sensitivity benefitted more when the majority of the training involved opaque targets. Although extensive training with transparent targets produced a strong understanding of reward dynamics, this dominant decision cue undermined attention to secondary cues that are more important in less transparent environments.

最佳决策的环境线索比比皆是。有些具有高度的预测性和立即透明性（例如，数量），而另一些则可能难以辨别或需要时间才能获得（例如，概率和延迟）。在本实验中，我们操纵了一个特别显着且因此占主导地位的线索的可用性，即当结果的价值随着时间的推移而增加时，参与者应该何时兑现 - 目标立方体的大小随着其价值的增加而增加。对于某些目标，这个扩展的立方体提示是可见的，但对于其他目标则不是。相比之下，高度预测但不太明显相关的颜色提示无处不在，最近的延迟奖励关系也表明了奖励动态。该研究解决了一个简单的问题：对揭示主导线索的透明目标进行更多训练是否会对不断变化的偶然事件产生更大的敏感性，或者对不透明目标进行更多训练是否会产生更高的敏感性？当大部分培训涉及不透明目标时，参与者的应急敏感性受益更多。尽管使用透明目标进行的广泛训练对奖励动态产生了深刻的理解，但这种主导决策线索破坏了对次要线索的关注，而次要线索在不太透明的环境中更为重要。