Inference-driven attention in symbolic and perceptual tasks: Biases toward expected and unexpected inputs

Abstract

The aims of this paper are (a) to gather support for the hypothesis that some basic mechanisms of attentional deployment (i.e., its high efficiency in dealing with expected and unexpected inputs) meet the requirements of the inferential system and have possibly evolved to support its functioning, and (b) to show that these orienting mechanisms function in very similar ways in two perceptual tasks and in a symbolic task. The general hypothesis and its predictions are sketched in the Introduction, after a discussion of current findings concerning visual attention and the generalities of the inferential system. In the empirical section, three experiments are presented where participants tracked visual trajectories (Experiments 1 and 3) or arithmetic series (Experiments 2 and 3), responding to the onset of a target event (e.g., to a specific number) and to the repetition of an event (e.g., to a number appearing twice consecutively). Target events could be anticipated when they were embedded in regular series/trajectories; they could be anticipated, with the anticipation later disconfirmed, when a regular series/trajectory was abruptly interrupted before the target event occurred; and they could not be anticipated when the series/trajectory was random. Repeated events could not be anticipated. Results show a very similar pattern of allocation in tracking visual trajectories and arithmetic series: Attention is focused on anticipated events; it is defocused and redistributed when an anticipation is not confirmed by ensuing events; however, performance decreases when dealing with random series/trajectory--that is, in the absence of anticipations. In our view, this is due to the fact that confirmed and disconfirmed anticipations are crucial events for "knowledge revision"--that is, the fine tuning of the inferential system to the environment; attentional mechanisms have developed so as to enhance detection of these events, possibly at all levels of inferential processing.

Neural correlates of inference-driven attention in perceptual and symbolic tasks: An event-related potential study

“…These patterns of attentional deployment work similarly for some perceptual tasks (tracking of perceptual trajectories) and for a symbolic task (tracking of simple arithmetic series). The behavioural results of the present experiments consistently replicate the findings of Cherubini et al (2006).…”

“…Behavioural findings replicate previous results by Cherubini et al (2006). As in Experiment 1, ERPs at S n corroborate the pattern of allocation of attention predicted by the inference-driven view of attentional deployment.…”

“…The only significant effect involving experiment was the interaction with the response event type, F(1, 23) ¼ 9.9, p , .01: In the perceptual task, responses to target events were globally faster than responses to repeated events, t(11) ¼ 6.6. p , .001, whereas the two responses were not different in the symbolic task (p ¼ .22). Faster responses to target events were observed in Cherubini et al (2006): Together with the increased number of errors for the repeated events, they point to the fact that responses to target events are generally easier, a result of no consequence for the experimental hypotheses. All the more, this trend not reaching significance in the present Experiment 2 is not of concern for the main results of this study.…”

Facilitation and inhibition caused by the orienting of attention in propositional reasoning tasks

“…In this study we use various mimicked "Posner" tasks in the propositional reasoning domain to corroborate the hypothesis that some attentional mechanisms are qualitatively similar in reasoning and perception. The results will be of interest both for the psychology of attention and the psychology of reasoning: first, by further corroborating the conjecture that the functional aspects of some orienting mechanisms may be of general importance and pervasive to the cognitive system, because they can be detected in visual orienting and in the orienting to symbolic spaces (Cherubini et al, 2006); second, by allowing the inferring of some general properties of the mental representations involved in deductive propositional reasoning.…”

“…In other words, we hypothesize that the orienting of attention upon symbolic representations that support reasoning follows some principles similar to some mechanisms involved in the orienting of attention in visual space. The conjecture of a link between visual orienting and the orienting of attention in other domains has been put forward in very general terms by various authors in the attention literature, recently and less recently (e.g., Posner, 1980;Wolfe, 2003); however, to our knowledge the only study that empirically investigated the topic is Cherubini, Burigo, and Bricolo (2006). The authors found a common pattern of focusing attention on anticipated events and defocusing and redistributing attention after an unexpected event (i.e., the surprise effect) in two visual tracking tasks and in a task that required mentally tracking an arithmetic series.…”