Modeling the interplay between conditioning and attention in a humanoid robot: Habituation and attentional blocking

A novel model of role of conditioning in attention is presented and evaluated on a Nao humanoid robot. The model implements conditioning and habituation in interaction with a dynamic neural field where different stimuli compete for activation. The model can be seen as a demonstration of how stimulus-selection and action-selection can be combined and illustrates how positive or negative reinforcement have different effects on attention and action. Attention is directed toward both rewarding and punishing stimuli, but appetitive actions are only directed toward positive stimuli. We present experiments where the model is used to control a Nao robot in a task where it can select between two objects. The model demonstrates some emergent effects also observed in similar experiments with humans and animals, including attentional blocking and latent inhibition.