Guest Editorial Special Issue on Prediction and Perception in Humans and Robots

This special issue addresses perceptual optimization processes related to attentional and predictive mechanisms. Optimal interaction with the environment requires that agents learn to anticipate and evaluate which sensory information is relevant for a task in a specific context so as to prioritize its processing. It has been suggested that during perception, the selection of sensory information depends on predictive and attentional mechanisms that have modulatory effects, enhancing/facilitating, or attenuating/canceling sensory signals. These mechanisms that modulate the way bottom-up incoming sensory information and top-down predictions based on previous experience are prioritized and integrated during perception, are commonly referred to as perceptual optimization processes.