During Pavlovian conditioning, a conditioned stimulus (CS) may act as a predictor of a
reward to be delivered in another location. Individuals vary widely in their propensity to
engage with the CS (sign tracking) or with the site of eventual reward (goal tracking). It is
often assumed that sign tracking involves the association of the CS with the motivational
value of the reward, resulting in the CS acquiring incentive value independent of the
outcome. However, experimental evidence for this assumption is lacking. In order to test the …