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Novelty-Driven Attentional Shifts During Concept Learning

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Madeline Bloomberg¹ (), Michael L. Mack¹; ¹University of Toronto

During new concept learning, attention is tuned to relevant features and systematically shifts when learning goals change. However, less is known about how attention operates when new information must be integrated into existing concepts. The hippocampus supports concept learning by engaging distinct pathways that serve complementary functions: the monosynaptic pathway extracts regularities and the trisynaptic pathway (TSP) encodes distinct episodes. We propose that encountering conflicting information triggers a novelty-induced encoding state in which TSP-related differentiation of exceptions can be observed through attentional reallocation that enables learners to update their concept representations. Using a delayed rule-plus-exception paradigm, eye-tracking measures, and model-based analyses with SUSTAIN, we will investigate how attention is tuned during learning and how it is reallocated in response to conflicting information. In our paradigm, learners will first acquire a general category rule. After mastering it, they will learn to categorize cross-over exceptions, stimuli that share features with rule-following items from the opposite category making them highly confusable. We expect that attention will be quickly directed towards diagnostic features during rule learning but expand to incorporate additional features when exceptions are encountered to facilitate category updating, and to differentiate exceptions from members of the opposite category. Eye-tracking data will show how this attentional reallocation aligns with model-based representational updates. Together, these findings will clarify how interactions among attention, learning, and memory enable the flexible formation and updating of concepts and identify the behavioural and computational signatures that capture this flexibility.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Other