Selective and divided attention in animals

Adaptive circuits for action and value information in rodent operant learning

Operant learning is a behavioral paradigm where animals learn to associate their actions with consequences, adapting their behavior accordingly. This review delves into the neural circuits that underpin operant learning in rodents, emphasizing the dynamic interplay between neural pathways, synaptic plasticity, and gene expression changes. We explore the cortico-basal ganglia circuits, highlighting the pivotal role of dopamine in modulating these pathways to reinforce behaviors that yield positive outcomes. We include insights from recent studies, which reveals the intricate roles of midbrain dopamine neurons in integrating action initiation and reward feedback, thereby enhancing movement-related activities in the dorsal striatum. Additionally, we discuss the molecular diversity of striatal neurons and their specific roles in reinforcement learning. The review also covers advances in transcriptome analysis techniques, such as single-cell RNA sequencing, which have provided deeper insights into the gene expression profiles associated with different neuronal populations during operant learning.

Cognitive flexibility in urban yellow mongooses, Cynictis penicillata

Cognitive flexibility enables animals to alter their behaviour and respond appropriately to environmental changes. Such flexibility is important in urban settings where environmental changes occur rapidly and continually. We studied whether free-living, urban-dwelling yellow mongooses, Cynictis penicillata, in South Africa, are cognitively flexible in reversal learning and attention task experiments (n = 10). Reversal learning was conducted using two puzzle boxes that were distinct visually and spatially, each containing a preferred or non-preferred food type. Once mongooses learned which box contained the preferred food type, the food types were reversed. The mongooses successfully unlearned their previously learned response in favour of learning a new response, possibly through a win-stay, lose-shift strategy. Attention task experiments were conducted using one puzzle box surrounded by zero, one, two or three objects, introducing various levels of distraction while solving the task. The mongooses were distracted by two and three distractions but were able to solve the task despite the distractions by splitting their attention between the puzzle box task and remaining vigilant. However, those exposed to human residents more often were more vigilant. We provide the first evidence of cognitive flexibility in urban yellow mongooses, which enables them to modify their behaviour to urban environments.

Divided stimulus control depends on differential and nondifferential reinforcement: Testing a quantitative model

We investigated the effects of differential and nondifferential reinforcers on divided control by compound-stimulus dimensions. Six pigeons responded in a delayed matching-to-sample procedure in which a blue or yellow sample stimulus flashed on/off at a fast or slow rate, and subjects reported its color or alternation frequency. The dimension to report was unsignaled (Phase 1) or signaled (Phase 2). Correct responses were reinforced with a probability of .70, and the probability of reinforcers for errors varied across conditions. Comparison choice depended on reinforcer ratios for correct and incorrect responding; as the frequency of error reinforcers according to a dimension increased, control (measured by log d) by that dimension decreased and control by the other dimension increased. Davison and Nevin's (1999) model described data when the dimension to report was unsignaled, whereas model fits were poorer when it was signaled, perhaps due to carryover between conditions. We are the first to test this quantitative model of divided control with reinforcers for errors and when the dimension to report is signaled; hence, further research is needed to establish the model's generality. We question whether divided stimulus control is dimensional and suggest it may instead reflect joint control by compound stimuli and reinforcer ratios.

Conceptual knowledge of the associativity principle: A review of the literature and an agenda for future research

Individuals use diverse strategies to solve mathematical problems, which can reflect their knowledge of arithmetic principles and predict mathematical expertise. For example, '6 + 38 - 35' can be solved via '38 - 35 = 3' and then '3 + 6 = 9', which is a shortcut-strategy derived from the associativity principle. The shortcut may be critical for understanding algebra, however approximately 50% of adults fail to use it. We review the research to consider why the associativity principle is challenging and highlight an important distinction between shortcut identification and execution. We also discuss how domain-specific skills and domain-general skills might play an important role in shortcut identification and execution, and provide an agenda for future research.

Spatial Learning in Japanese Eels Using Extra- and Intra-Maze Cues

Japanese eels (Anguilla japonica) were trained on a spatial-learning paradigm in a pool placed in an experimental room where several extra-maze cues were present. Four tubes were placed in the pool, of which one was open and could be entered by the eels. The open tube was placed at a fixed position in the pool and contained a triangular block that served as an intra-maze cue. The eels learned to identify the open tube, and their performance was maintained when the pool was rotated. However, they were unable to maintain their performance in a dark room, which suggests that spatial learning is based on visual cues. To determine the influence of the extra- and intra-maze cues, the tube with the triangle was moved to a new position and another open tube was kept in its place. The eels chose either the tube at the original position or the tube with the triangle at its new position, suggesting that spatial discrimination may be based on either extra- or intra-maze cues. We thus conclude that the eels employed an adjunctive strategy of multiple cues. In the next experiment, the eels were trained to visually discriminate the position of the stimulus (triangle), which changed in every trial. After the training, the eels were submitted to a test in which, in addition to the triangular pattern, a rectangular pattern was introduced. The eels discriminated between the tubes with the triangular and rectangular patterns, suggesting that they had the ability to discriminate visual patterns.

Relative reinforcer rates determine pigeons' attention allocation when separately trained stimuli are presented together

Previous research suggests that organisms allocate more attention to stimuli associated with higher reinforcer rates. This finding has been replicated several times when stimuli are trained together as compounds, but not in other procedures. Thus, the generality of the relation between relative reinforcer rates and divided attention is not well established. Therefore, we investigated whether relative reinforcer rates determine attention allocation when stimuli are trained separately and then encountered together. Pigeons learned to associate two colors and two frequencies of key light on/off alternation with a left or right comparison key in a symbolic 0-s delayed matching-to-sample task. Across conditions, we varied the probability of reinforcement associated with each stimulus dimension during training. After training, we introduced test trials in which a color and flash-frequency stimulus were presented simultaneously. During sample-stimulus presentation in test trials, all pigeons preferred the stimulus associated with the higher reinforcer rate, suggesting that more attention was allocated to that stimulus. Interestingly, such attention allocation did not result in preference for the comparison that matched that stimulus. Instead, all pigeons preferred the comparison that was physically closer to the stimulus associated with the higher reinforcer rate, suggesting that comparison choice was controlled by the location of that stimulus. Nevertheless, overall, our results provide the first evidence that relative reinforcer rates determine divided attention between separately trained stimuli and thus demonstrate the generality of the relation between relative reinforcement and attention allocation. We suggest several avenues for future research to establish further the generality of this relation.

Food quality and conspicuousness shape improvements in olfactory discrimination by mice

How animals locate nutritious but camouflaged prey items with increasing accuracy is not well understood. Olfactory foraging is common in vertebrates and the nutritional desirability of food should influence the salience of odour cues. We used signal detection analysis to test the effect of nutritional value relative to the conspicuousness of food patches on rates of foraging improvement of wild house mice Mus musculus searching for buried food (preferred peanuts or non-preferred barley). Olfactory cues were arranged to make food patches conspicuous or difficult to distinguish using a novel form of olfactory camouflage. Regardless of food type or abundance, mice searching for conspicuous food patches performed significantly better than mice searching for camouflaged patches. However, food type influenced how mice responded to different levels of conspicuousness. Mice searching for peanuts improved by similar rates regardless of whether food was easy or hard to find, but mice searching for barley showed significant differences, improving rapidly when food was conspicuous but declining in accuracy when food was camouflaged. Our results demonstrate a fundamental tenet of olfactory foraging that nutritional desirability influences rates of improvement in odour discrimination, enabling nutritious but camouflaged prey to be located with increasing efficiency.

European starlings use their acute vision to check on feline predators but not on conspecifics

Head movements allow birds with laterally placed eyes to move their centers of acute vision around and align them with objects of interest. Consequently, head movements have been used as indicator of fixation behavior (where gaze is maintained). However, studies on head movement behavior have not elucidated the degree to which birds use high-acuity or low-acuity vision. We studied how European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) used high-acuity vision in the early stages of visual exploration of a stuffed cat (common terrestrial predator), a taxidermy Cooper’s hawk (common aerial predator), and a stuffed study skin of a conspecific. We found that starlings tended to use their high acuity vision when looking at predators, particularly, the cat was above chance levels. However, when they viewed a conspecific, they used high acuity vision as expected by chance. We did not observe a preference for the left or right center of acute vision. Our findings suggest that starlings exposed to a predator (particularly cats) may employ selective attention by using high-acuity vision to obtain quickly detailed information useful for a potential escape, but exposed to a social context may use divided attention by allocating similar levels high- and low-quality vision to monitor both conspecifics and the rest of the environment.

Interactions between top-down and bottom-up attention in barn owls (Tyto alba)

Selective attention, the prioritization of behaviorally relevant stimuli for behavioral control, is commonly divided into two processes: bottom-up, stimulus-driven selection and top-down, task-driven selection. Here, we tested two barn owls in a visual search task that examines attentional capture of the top-down task by bottom-up mechanisms. We trained barn owls to search for a vertical Gabor patch embedded in a circular array of differently oriented Gabor distractors (top-down guided search). To track the point of gaze, a lightweight wireless video camera was mounted on the owl's head. Three experiments were conducted in which the owls were tested in the following conditions: (1) five distractors; (2) nine distractors; (3) five distractors with one distractor surrounded by a red circle; or (4) five distractors with a brief sound at the initiation of the stimulus. Search times and number of head saccades to reach the target were measured and compared between the different conditions. It was found that search time and number of saccades to the target increased when the number of distractors was larger (condition 2) and when an additional irrelevant salient stimulus, auditory or visual, was added to the scene (conditions 3 and 4). These results demonstrate that in barn owls, bottom-up attention interacts with top-down attention to shape behavior in ways similar to human attentional capture. The findings suggest similar attentional principles in taxa that have been evolutionarily separated for 300 million years.

Pigeons (Columba livia) show change blindness in a color-change detection task

Change blindness is a phenomenon whereby changes to a stimulus are more likely go unnoticed under certain circumstances. Pigeons learned a change detection task, in which they observed sequential stimulus displays consisting of individual colors back-projected onto three response keys. The color of one response key changed during each sequence and pecks to the key that displayed the change were reinforced. Pigeons showed a change blindness effect, in that change detection accuracy was worse when there was an inter-stimulus interval interrupting the transition between consecutive stimulus displays. Birds successfully transferred to stimulus displays involving novel colors, indicating that pigeons learned a general change detection rule. Furthermore, analysis of responses to specific color combinations showed that pigeons could detect changes involving both spectral and non-spectral colors and that accuracy was better for changes involving greater differences in wavelength. These results build upon previous investigations of change blindness in both humans and pigeons and suggest that change blindness may be a general consequence of selective visual attention relevant to multiple species and stimulus dimensions.

Perception and Cognition Are Largely Independent, but Still Affect Each Other in Systematic Ways: Arguments from Evolution and the Consciousness-Attention Dissociation

The main thesis of this paper is that two prevailing theories about cognitive penetration are too extreme, namely, the view that cognitive penetration is pervasive and the view that there is a sharp and fundamental distinction between cognition and perception, which precludes any type of cognitive penetration. These opposite views have clear merits and empirical support. To eliminate this puzzling situation, we present an alternative theoretical approach that incorporates the merits of these views into a broader and more nuanced explanatory framework. A key argument we present in favor of this framework concerns the evolution of intentionality and perceptual capacities. An implication of this argument is that cases of cognitive penetration must have evolved more recently and that this is compatible with the cognitive impenetrability of early perceptual stages of processing information. A theoretical approach that explains why this should be the case is the consciousness and attention dissociation framework. The paper discusses why concepts, particularly issues concerning concept acquisition, play an important role in the interaction between perception and cognition.

Primate cognition: attention, episodic memory, prospective memory, self-control, and metacognition as examples of cognitive control in nonhuman primates

Primate Cognition is the study of cognitive processes, which represent internal mental processes involved in discriminations, decisions, and behaviors of humans and other primate species. Cognitive control involves executive and regulatory processes that allocate attention, manipulate and evaluate available information (and, when necessary, seek additional information), remember past experiences to plan future behaviors, and deal with distraction and impulsivity when they are threats to goal achievement. Areas of research that relate to cognitive control as it is assessed across species include executive attention, episodic memory, prospective memory, metacognition, and self-control. Executive attention refers to the ability to control what sensory stimuli one attends to and how one regulates responses to those stimuli, especially in cases of conflict. Episodic memory refers to memory for personally experienced, autobiographical events. Prospective memory refers to the formation and implementation of future-intended actions, such as remembering what needs to be done later. Metacognition consists of control and monitoring processes that allow individuals to assess what information they have and what information they still need, and then if necessary to seek information. Self-control is a regulatory process whereby individuals forego more immediate or easier to obtain rewards for more delayed or harder to obtain rewards that are objectively more valuable. The behavioral complexity shown by nonhuman primates when given tests to assess these capacities indicates psychological continuities with human cognitive control capacities. However, more research is needed to clarify the proper interpretation of these behaviors with regard to possible cognitive constructs that may underlie such behaviors. WIREs Cogn Sci 2016, 7:294-316. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1397 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Dimensions of Cognition in an Insect, the Honeybee

This review provides evidence for the enormous richness of insect behavior, its high flexibility, and the cross-talk between different behavioral routines. The memory structure established by multiple forms of learning represents sensory inputs and relates behaviors in such a way that representations of complex environmental conditions are formed. Navigation and communication in social hymenoptera are particularly telling examples in this respect, but it is fair to conclude that similar integrated forms of dealing with the environment will be found in other insects when they are studied more closely. In this sense, research addressing behavioral complexity and its underlying neural substrates is necessary to characterize the real potential of insect learning and memory. Usually, such an approach has been used to characterize behavioral simplicity rather than complexity. It seems therefore timely to focus on the latter by studying problem solving alongside and in addition to elemental forms of learning.

Generalization of category knowledge and dimensional categorization in humans (Homo sapiens) and nonhuman primates (Macaca mulatta)

A theoretical framework within neuroscience distinguishes humans' implicit and explicit systems for category learning. We used a perceptual-categorization paradigm to ask whether nonhumans share elements of these systems. Participants learned categories that foster implicit or explicit categorization in humans, because they had a multidimensional, information-integration (II) solution or a unidimensional, rule-based (RB) solution. Then humans and macaques generalized their category knowledge to new, untested regions of the stimulus space. II generalization was impaired, suggesting that II category learning is conditioned and constrained by stimulus generalization to its original, trained stimulus contexts. RB generalization was nearly seamless, suggesting that RB category knowledge in humans and monkeys has properties that grant it some independence from the original, trained stimulus contexts. These findings raise the questions of (a) how closely macaques' dimensional categorization verges on humans' explicit/declarative categorization, and (b) how far macaques' dimensional categorization has advanced beyond that in other vertebrate species.

Differential reinforcement and resistance to change of divided-attention performance

Behavioral momentum theory provides a framework for understanding how conditions of reinforcement influence instrumental response strength under conditions of disruption (i.e., resistance to change). The present experiment examined resistance to change of divided-attention performance when different overall probabilities of reinforcement were arranged across two components of a multiple schedule. Pigeons responded in a delayed-matching-to-sample procedure with compound samples (color + line orientation) and element comparisons (two colors or two line orientations). Reinforcement ratios of 1:9, 1:1, and 9:1 for accurate matches on the two types of comparison trials were examined across conditions using reinforcement probabilities (color/lines) of .9/.1, .5/.5, and .1/.9 in the rich component and .18/.02, .1/.1, and .02/.18 in the lean component. Relative accuracy with color and line comparisons was an orderly function of relative reinforcement, but this relation did not depend on the overall rate of reinforcement between components. The resistance to change of divided-attention performance was greater for both trial types in the rich component with presession feeding and extinction, but not with decreases in sample duration. These findings suggest promise for the applicability of quantitative models of operant behavior to divided-attention performance, but they highlight the need to further explore conditions impacting the resistance to change of attending.

Categorization of multidimensional stimuli by pigeons

Six pigeons responded in a visual category learning task in which the stimuli were dimensionally separable Gabor patches that varied in frequency and orientation. We compared performance in two conditions which varied in terms of whether accurate performance required that responding be controlled jointly by frequency and orientation, or selectively by frequency. Results showed that pigeons learned both category tasks, with average overall accuracies of 85.5% and 82% in the joint and selective control conditions, respectively. Although perfect performance was possible, responding for all pigeons fell short of optimality. Model comparison analyses showed that the General Linear Classifier (GLC; Ashby, 1992) provided a better account of responding in the joint control condition than unidimensional models, but a unidimensional model fitted better for the condition that required selective control by frequency. Our results show that pigeons' responding in a visual categorization task can be controlled jointly or selectively by stimulus dimensions, depending on reinforcement contingencies. However, analysis of residuals confirmed that systematic deviations of GLC predictions from the obtained data were present in both conditions, suggesting that an alternative account of responding in multidimensional category learning tasks may be necessary.

The uncertainty processing theory of motivation

Most theories describe motivation using basic terminology (drive, 'wanting', goal, pleasure, etc.) that fails to inform well about the psychological mechanisms controlling its expression. This leads to a conception of motivation as a mere psychological state 'emerging' from neurophysiological substrates. However, the involvement of motivation in a large number of behavioural parameters (triggering, intensity, duration, and directedness) and cognitive abilities (learning, memory, decision, etc.) suggest that it should be viewed as an information processing system. The uncertainty processing theory (UPT) presented here suggests that motivation is the set of cognitive processes allowing organisms to extract information from the environment by reducing uncertainty about the occurrence of psychologically significant events. This processing of information is shown to naturally result in the highlighting of specific stimuli. The UPT attempts to solve three major problems: (i) how motivations can affect behaviour and cognition so widely, (ii) how motivational specificity for objects and events can result from nonspecific neuropharmacological causal factors (such as mesolimbic dopamine), and (iii) how motivational interactions can be conceived in psychological terms, irrespective of their biological correlates. The UPT is in keeping with the conceptual tradition of the incentive salience hypothesis while trying to overcome the shortcomings inherent to this view.

An investigation of auditory dimensional interaction in a bivariate bilateral conditioning paradigm in the rabbit

The current study adapted the Garner paradigm for diagnosing separable versus integral perceptual dimensions to the eye-blink classical conditioning paradigm using rabbits. Specifically, this study examined the ability of rabbits to categorize stimuli based on one auditory dimension while ignoring a second, irrelevant dimension by displaying an appropriate eye-blink for bilaterally conditioned discriminative responses. Tones used in training varied along two dimensions, starting frequency and magnitude of frequency sweep upwards from the start. Rabbits first learned to categorize along a single dimension (blinking one eye for one category response and the other eye for the other response) and then continued to categorize tones in a second phase in which the irrelevant dimension was varied. The variation of the irrelevant dimension did not disrupt performance, indicating that rabbits perceive these dimensions as separable.

Quantitative analyses of observing and attending

We review recent experiments examining whether simple models of the allocation and persistence of operant behavior are applicable to attending. In one series of experiments, observing responses of pigeons were used as an analog of attending. Maintenance of observing is often attributed to the conditioned reinforcing effects of a food-correlated stimulus (i.e., S+), so these experiments also may inform our understanding of conditioned reinforcement. Rates and allocations of observing were governed by rates of food or S+ delivery in a manner consistent with the matching law. Resistance to change of observing was well described by behavioral momentum theory only when rates of primary reinforcement in the context were considered. Rate and value of S+ deliveries did not affect resistance to change. Thus, persistence of attending to stimuli appears to be governed by primary reinforcement rates in the training context rather than conditioned reinforcing effects of the stimuli. An additional implication of these findings is that conditioned "reinforcers" may affect response rates through some mechanism other than response-strengthening. In a second series of experiments, we examined the applicability of the matching law to the allocation of attending to the elements of compound stimuli in a divided-attention task. The generalized matching law described performance well, and sensitivity to relative reinforcement varied with sample duration. The bias and sensitivity terms of the generalized matching law may provide measures of stimulus-driven and goal-driven control of divided attention. Further application of theories of operant behavior to performance on attention tasks may provide insights into what is referred to variously as endogenous, top-down, or goal-directed control of attention.

The Evolution of Color Polymorphism: Crypticity, Searching Images, and Apostatic Selection

The development and maintenance of color polymorphism in cryptic prey species is a source of enduring fascination, in part because it appears to result from selective processes operating across multiple levels of analysis, ranging from cognitive psychology to population ecology. Since the 1960s, prey species with diverse phenotypes have been viewed as the evolved reflection of the perceptual and cognitive characteristics of their predators. Because it is harder to search simultaneously for two or more cryptic prey types than to search for only one, visual predators should tend to focus on the most abundant forms and effectively overlook the others. The result should be frequency-dependent, apostatic selection, which will tend to stabilize the prey polymorphism. Validating this elegant hypothesis has been difficult, and many details have been established only relatively recently. This review clarifies the argument for a perceptual selective mechanism and examines the relevant experimental evidence.

Some conceptual problems with the classical theory of behaviour

Behaviour is usually assumed to depend on the reach of a critical intensity--termed reactivity threshold--by its motivation. This view represents a simple, predictive theoretical framework in ethology and animal psychology. However, it is here argued that only the influence of an isolated motivation on behaviour can be explained that way; that such a view fails to account for behaviour when several motivations are jointly activated. Upon analysis, the classical theory of behaviour (CTB) proves to be under-specified and thus leads to three conceptual problems that make it logically inconsistent for the study of multiple motivations. A revision of the CTB, called anticipatory dynamics model (ADM), is then developed in order to bring a theoretical solution to these conceptual problems. The ADM hypothesizes that an organism's motivational interactions are due to the limitation of the organism's attentional resources.

The pollination biology of Burmeistera (Campanulaceae): specialization and syndromes

The floral traits of plants with specialized pollination systems both facilitate the primary pollinator and restrict other potential pollinators. To explore interactions between pollinators and floral traits of the genus Burmeistera, I filmed floral visitors and measured pollen deposition for 10 species in six cloud forest sites throughout northern Ecuador. Nine species were primarily bat-pollinated (84-100% of pollen transfer); another (B. rubrosepala) was exclusively hummingbird-pollinated. According to a principal components analysis of 11 floral measurements, flowers of B. rubrosepala were morphologically distinct. Floral traits of all species closely matched traditional ornithophilous and chiropterophilous pollination syndromes; flowers of B. rubrosepala were bright red, lacked odor, opened in the afternoon, and had narrow corolla apertures and flexible pedicels, which positioned them below the foliage. Flowers of the bat-pollinated species were dull-colored, emitted odor, opened in the evening, and had wide apertures and rigid pedicels, which positioned them beyond the foliage. Aperture width appeared most critical to restricting pollination; hummingbirds visited wide flowers without contacting the reproductive parts, and bats did not visit the narrow flowers of B. rubrosepala. Aperture width may impose an adaptive trade-off that favors the high degree of specialization in the genus. Other floral measurements were highly variable amongst bat-pollinated species, including stigma exsertion, calyx lobe morphology, and pedicel length. Because multiple species of Burmeistera often coexist, such morphological diversity may reduce pollen competition by encouraging pollinator fidelity and/or spatially partitioning pollinator's bodies.

Divided attention performance and the matching law

This experiment examined the applicability of the generalized matching law to changes in divided-attention performance produced by variations in relative reinforcement rate. Pigeons were exposed to a delayed matching-to-sample procedure in which compound samples (color + line orientation) and element comparisons (two colors or two line orientations) were used. The relative rate of reinforcement for accurate matches on the two types of comparison trials was varied. Variations in relative accuracy with changes in relative reinforcement were well described by the generalized matching law. We suggest that the bias and sensitivity parameters of the generalized matching law may measure the contributions of sensory activation and stimulus pertinence, respectively, to divided-attention performance. Additional work using similar analyses might contribute to a more general quantitative account of how differential consequences contribute to decision processes involved in the allocation of attention.