Choosing between alternatives is the stuff of everyday life. Many choices require
trades between competing objectives, such as between capitalizing on past experience
('exploitation') and updating this experience ('exploration'). In visual perception,
where speed is important, there are tensions between stability of appearance, sensitivity
to visual detail, and exploration of fundamental alternatives. Presumably, a 'sweet
spot' balancing these objectives attains the highest degree of adaptive function.
Here, we employ a no-report binocular rivalry paradigm combined with stochastic dynamic
modeling to estimate how the visual system balances the objectives of stability, sensitivity,
and exploration throughout the lifespan. Observed and simulated results reveal characteristic
age- and sex-specific developmental and maturational lifespan trajectories that quantify
important aspects of our neurocognitive phenotype. As we also reveal aspects of atypical
development underlying mental health disorders, our cognitive modeling may inspire
the field of developmental computational psychiatry, in addition to developmental
and evolutionary cognitive neuroscience.
