Learning to become an expert: reinforcement learning and the acquisition of perceptual expertise

Abstract

Acquisition of perceptual skills is of vital importance as it enables identification of objects in the environment. With training and experience, it is possible to get specialized at recognizing a particular category of objects. The research on perceptual expertise has mostly contrasted performances and brain areas between experts and novices. The differences in perceptual capabilities between the experts and the novices rely on learning of implicit rules for categorization of objects1 and 2 maintaining the domain-specific information in the working memory. There is evidence that acquisition of expertise is associated with activations in ventral visual stream, especially in the fusiform gyrus, the lateral occipital cortex and inferior temporal cortex. doi : 10.5214/ans.0972.7531.1118307