CAREER: Reward learning, selection history, and attentional control

职业：奖励学习、选择历史和注意力控制

• 批准号: 2141860
• 负责人: Michael Grubb
• 金额: $ 46.98万
• 依托单位: Trinity College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-07-01 至 2027-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2141860&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Reward; learning; selection; history

From a parade of internal thoughts, feelings, and memories, to an ever-changing barrage of external sights, sounds, and smells, waking life contains far more information than our nervous systems can handle at any one time. We overcome this challenge by selectively attending to the world; that is, by prioritizing the processing of some kinds of information at the expense of others. But how is attention allocated and how much voluntary control do we have over that process? The answers to these research questions have vast implications for individual experience, and for society at large. This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project advances our scientific understanding of how an observer’s past modulates their attention in the present. In addition to informing research in other core areas of psychology like learning and memory, the research outcomes have applications to clinical work, as aberrant attentional mechanisms are hypothesized to play a role in a multitude of mental health disorders (e.g., substance abuse, anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorder). The PI is a faculty member at a primarily undergraduate institution, and this project provides unique opportunities for undergraduate research training and for STEM-focused innovation in the undergraduate classroom. As an additional component of the education plan, the PI furthers efforts to raise the visibility of established scientists from underrepresented communities and promotes inclusive mentoring in the service of retaining underrepresented students in science.Visual attention can be allocated to specific locations in the visual field or to features of objects like color, orientation, or motion direction. Sometimes, shifts of attention are voluntarily generated to support goal-directed behavior. Other times, attention is “captured” by physically salient objects (e.g., those that suddenly appear or are visually unique). While framing attention in such dichotomous terms has been the dominant theoretical approach for many decades, the literature now makes clear that non-salient stimuli can also capture attention. Such attentional biases rely on one’s unique history (e.g., if objects have been frequently attended in the past, or if they have been associated with receiving reward). Using behavioral and eye-tracking methods, the first research goal of this CAREER project is to disentangle the impact of two such historical factors on attentional control: frequent attentional allocation (selection history) and receiving of rewards (reward history). The second goal is to use functional brain imaging to examine the neural systems involved in selection-history-derived attentional biases and to test the hypothesis that information prediction errors generated by the ventral striatum modulate the allocation of visual attention. Whereas Aims 1 and 2 of the project focus on physically non-salient features that bias attention as a result of former experience, Aim 3 shifts the focus to physically salient stimuli and examines how saliency and history interact. Extending recent work from the PI’s laboratory, the third goal is to use psychophysical methods to model the temporal dynamics of visual processing when attention has been reflexively allocated by abrupt onsets that predict the presence or absence of available reward.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

从一系列内在的思想、感觉和记忆，到不断变化的外部景象、声音和气味，清醒的生活包含的信息远远超过我们的神经系统在任何时候都能处理的信息。我们通过有选择地关注世界来克服这一挑战;也就是说，通过以牺牲其他信息为代价来优先处理某些类型的信息。但是，注意力是如何分配的，我们对这个过程有多少自愿控制？这些研究问题的答案对个人经验和整个社会都有巨大的影响。这个教师早期职业发展（CAREER）项目推进了我们对观察者的过去如何调节他们现在的注意力的科学理解。除了为学习和记忆等心理学其他核心领域的研究提供信息外，研究结果还可应用于临床工作，因为异常注意力机制被假设在多种心理健康障碍中发挥作用（例如，物质滥用、焦虑症、自闭症谱系障碍）。PI是一个主要的本科院校的教员，这个项目为本科研究培训和本科课堂上以STEM为重点的创新提供了独特的机会。作为教育计划的一个额外组成部分，PI进一步努力提高来自代表性不足社区的知名科学家的知名度，并促进包容性指导，以留住科学领域代表性不足的学生。视觉注意力可以分配给视野中的特定位置或物体的特征，如颜色，方向或运动方向。有时，注意力的转移是自愿产生的，以支持目标导向的行为。其他时候，注意力被物理上突出的物体“捕获”（例如，那些突然出现的或视觉上独特的）。虽然在这种二分法的术语框架的注意已经占主导地位的理论方法几十年来，文献现在清楚地表明，非显着刺激也可以捕获注意。这种注意力偏差依赖于一个人独特的历史（例如，如果对象在过去已经被频繁地关注，或者如果它们已经与接收奖励相关联）。使用行为和眼动追踪方法，这个CAREER项目的第一个研究目标是解开两个这样的历史因素对注意力控制的影响：频繁的注意力分配（选择历史）和接受奖励（奖励历史）。第二个目标是使用功能性脑成像检查神经系统参与选择历史衍生的注意力偏差，并测试腹侧纹状体产生的信息预测错误调节视觉注意力分配的假设。虽然该项目的目标1和2侧重于身体非显着的特点，偏见的注意力，由于以前的经验，目标3转移到身体显着的刺激，并探讨显着性和历史如何相互作用。从PI的实验室扩展最近的工作，第三个目标是使用心理物理学的方法来模拟视觉处理的时间动态时，注意力已被反射性地分配突然发作，预测存在或不存在的可用reward.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

项目成果

The composition of the choice set modulates probability weighting in risky decisions

选择集的组成调节风险决策中的概率权重

• DOI: 10.3758/s13415-023-01062-y
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: & Behavioral Neuroscience
• 作者: Grubb, M. A.;Li, Y.;Larisch, R.;Hartmann, J.;Gottlieb, J.;Levy, I.
• 通讯作者: Levy, I.