Two Distinct Attentional Priorities Guide Exploratory and Exploitative Gaze in Parallel.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Neuroscience

Background:

• Gaze is directed towards informative, novel, or reward-predictive visual stimuli.
• Attention is theorized to involve two systems: exploratory (prioritizing uncertainty) and exploitative (prioritizing reward information).

Purpose of the Study:

• To test the hypothesis of two separable attention systems influencing gaze preferences.
• To investigate how reward history and novelty affect attention and learning in nonhuman primates.

Main Methods:

• Nonhuman primates learned feature-based attention tasks with objects having learned reward associations or novel features.
• Fixations and choice accuracy were recorded and analyzed.
• A Parallel Belief States model quantified exploratory value and attention biases.

Main Results:

• Reward history slowed learning by attracting fixations to previously rewarded distractors.
• This bias persisted in choice-related fixations but was overcome by exploratory sampling preceding choices.
• Exploratory sampling remained unaffected by reward history, unlike exploitative fixations showing persistent biases.

Conclusions:

• Gaze is guided by two parallel attentional priorities: exploratory attention for information sampling and exploitative attention for goal-relevant features.
• Exploratory attention prioritizes uncertainty, while exploitative attention prioritizes learned reward information, demonstrating separable systems influencing gaze behavior.