Two distinct attentional priorities guide exploratory and exploitative gaze.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Primate Behavior
• Visual Attention

Background:

• Gaze is preferentially directed towards informative, novel, or reward-predictive visual stimuli.
• Attention systems may separate prioritization of uncertain items from those with known reward value.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether distinct attentional systems influence gaze preferences based on reward history versus novelty.
• To differentiate the roles of exploratory and exploitative attention in guiding gaze during learning and decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Nonhuman primates were trained on feature-based attention tasks involving objects with learned reward associations or novel objects.
• Fixation patterns during learning and object choice were recorded and analyzed.
• Computational modeling was used to assess the influence of reward history on exploratory and exploitative fixations.

Main Results:

• Previous reward associations slowed learning by attracting fixations to familiar features.
• This reward history bias in fixations persisted even after learning was complete, particularly for choice-related gaze.
• Exploratory fixations preceding choices showed minimal reward history bias, unlike exploitative fixations.

Conclusions:

• Gaze is guided by two separable attentional priorities: exploratory attention for uncertain items and exploitative attention for goal-relevant features.
• Reward history creates a bias in exploitative attention, while exploratory attention remains less influenced, facilitating the exploration of novel stimuli.