The vehicle mounted perception sensor gathers environment perception data from a scene using first and second heterogeneous (different modality) sensors, at least one of the heterogeneous sensors is directable to a predetermined region of interest. A perception processor receives the environment perception data and performs object recognition to identify objects each with a computed confidence score. The processor assesses the confidence score vis-à-vis a predetermined threshold, and based on that assessment, generates an attention signal to redirect the one of the heterogeneous sensors to a region of interest identified by the other heterogeneous sensor. In this way information from one sensor primes the other sensor to increase accuracy and provide deeper knowledge about the scene and thus do a better job of object tracking in vehicular applications.