Investigated
Can attention, not surprise, explain looking time?
Short answer
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Looking time can reflect surprise, because unexpected events may generate information gain and motivate further sampling. But attention is not a single, settled mechanism: task relevance, perceptual novelty, scanning strategy, and limits of looking-time measures can also shape behavior.
The views on this question
Two lenses on the same evidence. Source weight and the primary source ratio show what each rests on.
Alternative
Source weight 50%Lens adapted to this topic: Why looking may exceed surprise
A dissenting interpretation argues that “attention” is too broad to function as a clear explanation, while surprise alone may also be insufficient. Looking can reflect perceptual novelty, stimulus structure, task demands, scanning choices, and capacity limits. Evidence that gaze patterns are asymmetric or contain non-perceptual influences challenges simple surprise-based interpretations.
- “Attention” may obscure rather than explain looking unless researchers specify the mechanisms, tasks, and capacity limits involved.
- Looking responses can reflect non-perceptual considerations, challenging accounts based only on perceptual similarity or surprise.
- Eye-tracking patterns show that whole-scene looking time may conceal distinct visual-scanning strategies.
- Novelty can attract gaze independently of ordinary saliency, so increased looking need not be reducible to surprise.
- The asymmetry of responses to changed events suggests that looking may depend on more than a simple, symmetric surprise signal.