Attention Dynamics in Category Learning

Theories of human category learning assume that attention plays a central role in modulating the influence of cues on learners' behavior. However, each theory incorporates attention in a different way. Three experiments used eye tracking to record the attention dynamics of human learners as they acquired novel categories. Changes in the pattern of eye fixations were compared to predictions of two prominent connectionist learning models: Kruschke's (1992) ALCOVE (attention learning covering map) and Kruschke and Johansen's (1999) RASHNL (rapid attention shifts n' learning). Across the three experiments I found that people exhibited early and rapid attention shifts. The early shifts were coupled with subsequent suboptimal attention profiles, in which people continued to attend to irrelevant information, in Experiments 1 and 2, or to more information than the minimum requires, in Experiment 3. These findings are interpreted as being more consistent with RASHNL's attentional predictions than with ALCOVE's.