PhD research · Durham University
How we prioritise
information.
When do we prioritise what we expect, and when does unexpected information take priority?
My PhD investigates how learned rewards and task demands shift this balance across awareness, attention and memory. Active inference provides a framework for exploring these questions.
Awareness
What reaches consciousness
Does what we expect change what we become aware of?
An object can fit our expectations about a scene, or take us by surprise. My research asks whether that fit affects how quickly the object reaches awareness, and whether learning about reward can shift the balance.
The proposed studies also examine whether this depends on what people attend to while learning: the meaning of an object in context, or another feature associated with reward.
Proposed approach
Breaking continuous flash suppression
A visual masking technique in which an image is presented to one eye while changing patterns are shown to the other. The planned studies measure detection time and accuracy before and after reward learning.
Attention
Where we look
When does reward change where we look?
Looking around a scene brings expectations and current goals together. The planned research examines how an object’s fit with its surroundings and its association with reward jointly guide eye movements.
Comparing visual search with intentional memorisation allows me to ask whether the task changes these priorities. Of particular interest is whether learning that reward reliably follows one kind of information shifts the pattern of attention.
Proposed approach
Eye tracking during scene viewing
Measures include how quickly people first look at an object, how long they look at it, and whether they return to it. The studies use everyday scenes containing objects that fit or violate scene expectations.
Memory
What stays with us
Which information do we carry forward?
My research asks how reward and expectation shape what people remember, and whether the balance changes when learning is intentional or incidental.
The planned studies compare recognising an object with recalling its identity and location. They also distinguish remembering specific details from a more general sense of familiarity.
Proposed approach
Recognition and recall
Recognition tasks ask people to identify previously seen objects. A recall task asks them to reconstruct which objects appeared in a scene and where they were located. Eye tracking links these questions to attention during learning.
Across the studies
Following the
shift in priorities.
The proposed experiments compare situations in which reward is equally likely for expected and unexpected information with situations in which one reliably predicts reward.
The aim is to understand how information priorities change with learning. Behavioural experiments and eye tracking form the core of the programme, with computational modelling planned to help evaluate competing accounts.
Read a short introduction