Figure 1.

Foraging for information. We test the view that foraging for information involves the leaky accumulation of information about the fixated item. Information acquisition involves a time-dependent, location-specific gain in precision. Participants should leave a location when the information gain rate falls below a threshold, in parallel with classical foraging for reward (Stephens and Krebs, 1987). The location fixated next is determined by which location has the greatest estimated information gain rate. Meanwhile information about the original item decays. This predicts that participants refixate the first item seen, that dwell times shorten over the course of a trial, and that longer fixations result in fewer subsequent refixations of the same item.