Learning-induced changes in attentional allocation during categorization: a sizable catalog of attention change as measured by eye movements.
Learning how to allocate attention properly is essential for success at many categorization tasks. Advances in our understanding of learned attention are stymied by a chicken-and-egg problem: there are no theoretical accounts of learned attention that predict patterns of eye movements, making data collection difficult to justify, and there are not enough datasets to support the development of a rich theory of learned attention. The present work addresses this by reporting five measures relating to the overt allocation of attention across 10 category learning experiments: accuracy, probability of fixating irrelevant information, number of fixations to category features, the amount of change in the allocation of attention (using a new measure called Time Proportion Shift - TIPS), and a measure of the relationship between attention change and erroneous responses. Using these measures, the data suggest that eye-movements are not substantially connected to error in most cases and that aggregate trial-by-trial attention change is generally stable across a number of changing task variables. The data presented here provide a target for computational models that aim to account for changes in overt attentional behaviors across learning.
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada.
Caitlyn M
CM
McColeman
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada.
Jordan I
JI
Barnes
Cognitive Science Program, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada.
Lihan
L
Chen
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Kimberly M
KM
Meier
Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Midlothian, United Kingdom.
R Calen
RC
Walshe
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada ; Cognitive Science Program, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada.
Mark R
MR
Blair
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D030141:Feedback, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult