We sought to provide evidence for a combined effect of two attentional mechanisms during associative learning. Participants’ eye movements were recorded as they predicted the outcomes following different pairs of cues. Across the trials of an initial stage, a relevant cue in each pair was consistently followed by one of two outcomes, while an irrelevant cue was equally followed by either of them. Thus, the relevant cue should have been associated with small relative prediction errors, compared to the irrelevant cue. In a later stage, each pair came to be followed by one outcome on a random half of the trials and by the other outcome on the remaining half, and thus there should have been a rise in the overall prediction error. Consistent with an attentional mechanism based on relative prediction error, an attentional advantage for the relevant cue was evident in the first stage. On the other hand, in accordance with a mechanism linked to overall prediction error, the attention paid to both types of cues increased at the beginning of the second stage. These results showed up in both dwell times and within-trial patterns of fixations, and they were predicted by a hybrid model of attention.

我们试图为联想学习期间两种注意力机制的综合作用提供证据。参与者的眼球运动被记录下来，因为他们根据不同的线索预测结果。在初始阶段的试验中，每对中的一个相关线索始终遵循两个结果中的一个，而一个不相关的线索同样遵循它们中的任何一个。因此，与无关线索相比，相关线索应该与较小的相对预测误差相关联。在稍后的阶段，每一对都在随机一半的试验中得到一个结果，在剩下的一半试验中得到另一个结果，因此总体预测误差应该会增加。与基于相对预测误差的注意力机制一致，在第一阶段，相关线索的注意力优势很明显。另一方面，根据与整体预测误差相关的机制，在第二阶段开始时，对两种类型线索的关注增加。这些结果出现在停留时间和试验中的注视模式中，并且它们是由注意力的混合模型预测的。