When we make an error, fast neural processes re-distribute visual attention in a way that avoids future errors and generally speeds learning (Wills et al., 2007). However, the same processes can also lead to irrational generalizations, perhaps most notably the inverse base-rate effect (Wills et al., 2014). Le Pelley et al. (2016) provides a fairly comprehensive review of work in this area.
List of publications
Dome, L., & Wills, A. (2023). Errorless irrationality: removing error-driven components from the inverse base-rate effect paradigm. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 237-243.
Dome, L. & Wills, A.J. (2023). Zebra reduction: Better generalization through distraction. preprint.
Inkster, A.B., Mitchell, C. J., Schlegelmilch, R., & Wills, A. J. (2022). Effect of a context shift on the inverse base rate effect. Open Journal of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience, 1, 22-29.
Inkster, A.B., Milton, F., Edmunds, C.E.R., Benattayallah, A., & Wills, A.J. (2022). Neural correlates of the inverse base-rate effect. Human Brain Mapping, 43, 1370-1380.
Le Pelley, M.E., Mitchell, C.J., Beesley, T., George, D.N., & Wills, A.J. (2016). Attention and associative learning in humans: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 142, 1111-1140.
Wills, A.J., Lavric, A., Hemmings, Y., & Surrey, E. (2014). Attention, predictive learning, and the inverse base-rate effect: Evidence from event-related potentials. NeuroImage, 87, 61-71.
Wills, A.J., Lavric, A., Croft, G., & Hodgson, T.L. (2007). Predictive learning, prediction errors and attention: Evidence from event-related potentials and eye tracking. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 843-854.
Lochmann, T., & Wills, A.J. (2003). Predictive history in an allergy prediction task. In F. Schmalhofer, R.M. Young, & G. Katz (Eds.). Proceedings of EuroCogSci 03: The European Cognitive Science Conference (pp. 217-222). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.