Alerting and Orienting Attention in Anti-Predator Vigilance: Neurocognitive Modelling and Behavioural Evidence

The next in-person meeting of the seminar “Philosophy of Cognitive Science” will take place on May 22nd at 10:30 AM (Warsaw time, CET). The seminar will be held at Staszic Palace (IFiS, PAN), room 232.

Our guest will be Adam Linson (Open University, UK). We will discuss a draft co-authored with Guy Beauchamp, titled: “Alerting and Orienting Attention in Anti-Predator Vigilance: Neurocognitive Modelling and Behavioural Evidence.”

From introduction:  Part of the imperative for survival includes not only direct anti-predation strategies but also a balancing of costs. Apart from opportunity costs such as giving up food or reproduction, there are energetic costs, as when effort is expended on defensive behaviour in the absence of any threat. There are even energetic costs from neurocognitively attending to a dynamic environment as in anti-predator vigilance. 

Here, we explore a hypothesis about the neurobehavioural dynamics of attention during vigilance bouts centred on predator detection. We develop a formal model to account for key sensorimotor features of vigilance, based on bio-evolutionary and ecological first principles related to selective pressure on predator-prey interactions, with an avian focus.

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