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Chapter 10 - Attention as Rational Choice

from Part III - Which Machinery Supports the Drive for Knowledge?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2022

By
Jacqueline Gottlieb
Edited by
Irene Cogliati Dezza ,
Eric Schulz  and
Charley M. Wu
Irene Cogliati Dezza
Affiliation:
University College London
Eric Schulz
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik, Tübingen
Charley M. Wu
Affiliation:
Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
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Summary

I argue for a new operationalization of attention as a process of information selection that is endogenous, rather than exogenous, to decision-makers’ goals and constraints. Traditional accounts postulate that attention is captured in a “bottom-up” fashion by external sensory stimuli or in a “top-down” fashion by external experimental instructions. In contrast, recent studies of information-demand provide a powerful alternative view whereby attention is allocated endogenously to serve a decision-maker’s goals, and is subject to the decision-maker’s knowledge, biases, and constraints. I review neurophysiological evidence supporting this view, with a focus on optimal and potentially suboptimal forms of attention allocation aimed to reduce uncertainty and enhance reward gains.

Keywords

Information selectionattentionneuronstop-downcost–benefit
Type
Chapter
Information
The Drive for Knowledge
The Science of Human Information Seeking
 , pp. 217 - 236
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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