Dataset Information

Different effects of reward value and saliency during bumblebee visual search for multiple rewarding targets.

ABSTRACT: Several animals, including bees, use visual search to distinguish targets of interest and ignore distractors. While bee flower choice is well studied, we know relatively little about how they choose between multiple rewarding flowers in complex floral environments. Two factors that could influence bee visual search for multiple flowers are the saliency (colour contrast against the background) and the reward value of flowers. We here investigated how these two different factors contribute to bee visual search. We trained bees to independently recognize two rewarding flower types that, in different experiments, differed in either saliency, reward value or both. We then measured their choices and attention to these flowers in the presence of distractors in a test without reinforcement. We found that bees preferred more salient or higher rewarding flowers and ignored distractors. When the high-reward flowers were less salient than the low-reward flowers, bees were nonetheless equally likely to choose high-reward flowers, for the reward and saliency values we used. Bees were also more likely to attend to these high-reward flowers, spending higher inspection times around them and exhibiting faster search times when choosing them. When flowers differed in reward, we also found an effect of the training order with low-reward targets being more likely to be chosen if they had been encountered during the more immediate training session prior to the test. Our results parallel recent findings from humans demonstrating that reward value can attract attention even when targets are less salient and irrelevant to the current task.

SUBMITTER: Nityananda V

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8238720 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundDuring visual exploration or free-view, gaze positioning is largely determined by the tendency to maximize visual saliency: more salient locations are more likely to be fixated. However, when visual input is completely irrelevant for performance, such as with non-visual tasks, this saliency maximization strategy may be less advantageous and potentially even disruptive for task-performance. Here, we examined whether visual saliency remains a strong driving force in determining gaze positions even in non-visual tasks. We tested three alternative hypotheses: a) That saliency is disadvantageous for non-visual tasks and therefore gaze would tend to shift away from it and towards non-salient locations; b) That saliency is irrelevant during non-visual tasks and therefore gaze would not be directed towards it but also not away-from it; c) That saliency maximization is a strong behavioral drive that would prevail even during non-visual tasks.MethodsGaze position was monitored as participants performed visual or non-visual tasks while they were presented with complex or simple images. The effect of attentional demands was examined by comparing an easy non-visual task with a more difficult one.ResultsExploratory behavior was evident, regardless of task difficulty, even when the task was non-visual and the visual input was entirely irrelevant. The observed exploratory behaviors included a strong tendency to fixate salient locations, central fixation bias and a gradual reduction in saliency for later fixations. These exploratory behaviors were spatially similar to those of an explicit visual exploration task but they were, nevertheless, attenuated. Temporal differences were also found: in the non-visual task there were longer fixations and later first fixations than in the visual task, reflecting slower visual sampling in this task.ConclusionWe conclude that in the presence of a rich visual environment, visual exploration is evident even when there is no explicit instruction to explore. Compared to visually motivated tasks, exploration in non-visual tasks follows similar selection mechanisms, but occurs at a lower rate. This is consistent with the view that the non-visual task is the equivalent of a dual-task: it combines the instructed task with an uninstructed, perhaps even mandatory, exploratory behavior.

Project description:Under fast viewing conditions, the visual system extracts salient and simplified representations of complex visual scenes. Saccadic eye movements optimize such visual analysis through the dynamic sampling of the most informative and salient regions in the scene. However, a general definition of saliency, as well as its role for natural active vision, is still a matter for discussion. Following the general idea that visual saliency may be based on the amount of local information, a recent constrained maximum-entropy model of early vision, applied to natural images, extracts a set of local optimal information-carriers, as candidate salient features. These optimal features proved to be more informative than others in fast vision, when embedded in simplified sketches of natural images. In the present study, for the first time, these features were presented in isolation, to investigate whether they can be visually more salient than other non-optimal features, even in the absence of any meaningful global arrangement (contour, line, etc.). In four psychophysics experiments, fast discriminability of a compound of optimal features (target) in comparison with a similar compound of non-optimal features (distractor) was measured as a function of their number and contrast. Results showed that the saliency predictions from the constrained maximum-entropy model are well verified in the data, even when the optimal features are presented in smaller numbers or at lower contrast. In the eye movements experiment, the target and the distractor compounds were presented in the periphery at different angles. Participants were asked to perform a simple choice-saccade task. Results showed that saccades can select informative optimal features spatially interleaved with non-optimal features even at the shortest latencies. Saccades' choice accuracy and landing position precision improved with SNR. In conclusion, the optimal features predicted by the reference model, turn out to be more salient than others, despite the lack of any clues coming from a global meaningful structure, suggesting that they get preferential treatment during fast image analysis. Also, peripheral fast visual processing of these informative local features is able to guide gaze orientation. We speculate that active vision is efficiently adapted to maximize information in natural visual scenes.

Dataset Information

Different effects of reward value and saliency during bumblebee visual search for multiple rewarding targets.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets