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The role of uncertainty in attentional and choice exploration

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The role of uncertainty in attentional and choice exploration. / Walker, Adrian; Luque, David; Le Pelley, Mike E. et al.
In: Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, Vol. 26, No. 6, 01.12.2019, p. 1911–1916.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Harvard

Walker, A, Luque, D, Le Pelley, ME & Beesley, T 2019, 'The role of uncertainty in attentional and choice exploration', Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 1911–1916. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01653-2

APA

Walker, A., Luque, D., Le Pelley, M. E., & Beesley, T. (2019). The role of uncertainty in attentional and choice exploration. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 26(6), 1911–1916. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01653-2

Vancouver

Walker A, Luque D, Le Pelley ME, Beesley T. The role of uncertainty in attentional and choice exploration. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. 2019 Dec 1;26(6):1911–1916. Epub 2019 Aug 19. doi: 10.3758/s13423-019-01653-2

Author

Walker, Adrian ; Luque, David ; Le Pelley, Mike E. et al. / The role of uncertainty in attentional and choice exploration. In: Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. 2019 ; Vol. 26, No. 6. pp. 1911–1916.

Bibtex

@article{2df05fd2ef6842ab893860ce6996eab3,
title = "The role of uncertainty in attentional and choice exploration",
abstract = "The exploitation-exploration (EE) trade-off describes how, when making a decision, an organism must often choose between a safe alternative with a known pay-off, and one or more riskier alternatives with uncertain pay-offs. Recently, the concept of the EE trade-off has been extended to the examination of how organisms distribute limited attentional resources between several stimuli. This work suggests that when the rules governing the environment are certain, participants learn to “exploit” by attending preferentially to cues that provide the most information about upcoming events. However, when the rules are uncertain, people “explore” by increasing their attention to all cues that may provide information to help in predicting upcoming events. In the current study, we examine how uncertainty affects the EE trade-off in attention using a contextual two-armed bandit task, where participants explore with both their attention and their choice behavior. We find evidence for an influence of uncertainty on the EE trade-off in both choice and attention. These findings provide support for the idea of an EE trade-off in attention, and that uncertainty is a primary motivator for exploration in both choice and attentional allocation.",
keywords = "Attention, Human associative learning, Exploration, Uncertainty",
author = "Adrian Walker and David Luque and {Le Pelley}, {Mike E.} and Tom Beesley",
note = "The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01653-2",
year = "2019",
month = dec,
day = "1",
doi = "10.3758/s13423-019-01653-2",
language = "English",
volume = "26",
pages = "1911–1916",
journal = "Psychonomic Bulletin and Review",
issn = "1069-9384",
publisher = "Springer",
number = "6",

}

RIS

TY - JOUR

T1 - The role of uncertainty in attentional and choice exploration

AU - Walker, Adrian

AU - Luque, David

AU - Le Pelley, Mike E.

AU - Beesley, Tom

N1 - The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01653-2

PY - 2019/12/1

Y1 - 2019/12/1

N2 - The exploitation-exploration (EE) trade-off describes how, when making a decision, an organism must often choose between a safe alternative with a known pay-off, and one or more riskier alternatives with uncertain pay-offs. Recently, the concept of the EE trade-off has been extended to the examination of how organisms distribute limited attentional resources between several stimuli. This work suggests that when the rules governing the environment are certain, participants learn to “exploit” by attending preferentially to cues that provide the most information about upcoming events. However, when the rules are uncertain, people “explore” by increasing their attention to all cues that may provide information to help in predicting upcoming events. In the current study, we examine how uncertainty affects the EE trade-off in attention using a contextual two-armed bandit task, where participants explore with both their attention and their choice behavior. We find evidence for an influence of uncertainty on the EE trade-off in both choice and attention. These findings provide support for the idea of an EE trade-off in attention, and that uncertainty is a primary motivator for exploration in both choice and attentional allocation.

AB - The exploitation-exploration (EE) trade-off describes how, when making a decision, an organism must often choose between a safe alternative with a known pay-off, and one or more riskier alternatives with uncertain pay-offs. Recently, the concept of the EE trade-off has been extended to the examination of how organisms distribute limited attentional resources between several stimuli. This work suggests that when the rules governing the environment are certain, participants learn to “exploit” by attending preferentially to cues that provide the most information about upcoming events. However, when the rules are uncertain, people “explore” by increasing their attention to all cues that may provide information to help in predicting upcoming events. In the current study, we examine how uncertainty affects the EE trade-off in attention using a contextual two-armed bandit task, where participants explore with both their attention and their choice behavior. We find evidence for an influence of uncertainty on the EE trade-off in both choice and attention. These findings provide support for the idea of an EE trade-off in attention, and that uncertainty is a primary motivator for exploration in both choice and attentional allocation.

KW - Attention

KW - Human associative learning

KW - Exploration

KW - Uncertainty

U2 - 10.3758/s13423-019-01653-2

DO - 10.3758/s13423-019-01653-2

M3 - Journal article

VL - 26

SP - 1911

EP - 1916

JO - Psychonomic Bulletin and Review

JF - Psychonomic Bulletin and Review

SN - 1069-9384

IS - 6

ER -