Quick selection tool always contains minus sign

I am obviously not a very experienced Photoshop user and I have a question about the Quick Selection tool. I am using CS6 on a Mac with OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
I watched a couple tutorials and my system is behaving differently. In the tutorials I watched, when the quick selection tool is chosen the "brush" contains a plus sign. If too much area is selected, that can be corrected by holding the option/alt key and this changes the brush to a minus sign. On my computer, when I select the tool the brush always contains a minus sign. I think the tool is working OK but I wonder why I never see the plus sign inside the brush.
Please advise.
Thank you.

Be sure the tool isn't set to subtract in the options bar. Otherwise, try resetting the tool by right- or control-clicking the blue arrow just to the right of the tool preset (under the blue PS icon in the below screenshot) to reset the tool.

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