Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31429060›Full record

ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2019

The role of uncertainty in attentional and choice exploration.

Adrian R Walker, David Luque, Mike E Le Pelley, Tom Beesley

Abstract read
PubMed Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
12citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

12 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Trial
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Decision-Making in Repeated Games: Insights from Active Inference.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025
    Review
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Review
  12. Uncertainty in learning, choice, and visual fixation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Adrian R WalkerSchool of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia. adrian.walker@unsw.edu.au.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0801-2316
David LuqueSchool of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
Mike E Le PelleySchool of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
Tom BeesleySchool of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.

Funding

Australian Department of Education and Training Research Training ProgramAustralian Research Council Discovery Project DP140103268
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The exploitation-exploration (EE) trade-off describes how, when making a decision, an organism must often choose between a safe alternative with a known pay-off, and one or more riskier alternatives with uncertain pay-offs. Recently, the concept of the EE trade-off has been extended to the examination of how organisms distribute limited attentional resources between several stimuli. This work suggests that when the rules governing the environment are certain, participants learn to "exploit" by attending preferentially to cues that provide the most information about upcoming events. However, when the rules are uncertain, people "explore" by increasing their attention to all cues that may provide information to help in predicting upcoming events. In the current study, we examine how uncertainty affects the EE trade-off in attention using a contextual two-armed bandit task, where participants explore with both their attention and their choice behavior. We find evidence for an influence of uncertainty on the EE trade-off in both choice and attention. These findings provide support for the idea of an EE trade-off in attention, and that uncertainty is a primary motivator for exploration in both choice and attentional allocation.

Indexed as

AttentionCuesUncertaintyAdultChoice BehaviorFemaleHumansMaleYoung AdultAttentionExplorationHuman associative learningUncertainty

Identifiers

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.