Described is a system for rank-ordered and cognitive saliency schema-based object selection. The system receives a set of unnormalized probabilities corresponding to a set of objects competing for attentional selection in a current environment. Each unnormalized probability in the set of unnormalized probabilities is based on a likelihood estimation of encountering the corresponding object in the current environment. The set of objects is ranked based on a set of cognitive saliency values corresponding to the set of objects to generate a rank-ordered list of cognitive saliency values. The rank-ordered list of cognitive saliency values is analyzed to detect a schema of the current environment by which the set of objects is ranked. The schema is learned and stored along with a reward measure of the schema's utility. A maximum saliency object in the set of objects is selected based on the rank-ordered list of cognitive saliency values.