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In explaining how humans selectively attend, common frameworks often focus on how attention is allocated relative to an idealized allocation based on properties of the task. However, these perspectives often ignore different types of constraints that could help explain why attention was allocated in a particular way. For example, many computational models of learning are well equipped to explain how attention should ideally be allocated to minimize errors within the task, but these models often assume all features are perfectly encoded or that the only learning goal is to maximize accuracy. In this article, we argue for a more comprehensive view by using computational modeling to understand the complex interactions that occur between selective attention and memory. Our central thesis is that although selective attention directs attention to relevant dimensions, relevance can be established only through memories of previous experiences. Hence, attention is initially used to encode features and create memories, but thereafter, attention operates selectively on the basis of what is kept in memory. Through this lens, deviations from ideal performance can still be viewed as goal-directed selective attention, but the orientation of attention is subject to the constraints of the individual learner.
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Macaques preferentially attend to intermediately surprising information.
Normative learning theories dictate that we should preferentially attend to informative sources, but only up to the point that our limited learning systems can process their content. Humans, including infants, show this predicted strategic deployment of attention. Here we demonstrate that rhesus monkeys, much like humans, attend to events of moderate surprisingness over both more and less surprising events. They do this in the absence of any specific goal or contingent reward, indicating that the behavioral pattern is spontaneous. We suggest this U-shaped attentional preference represents an evolutionarily preserved strategy for guiding intelligent organisms toward material that is maximally useful for learning.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2000759
- PAR ID:
- 10275762
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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