Gaze Amplifies Value in Decision Making

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Abstract

When making decisions, people tend to choose the option they have looked at more. An unanswered question is how attention influences the choice process: whether it amplifies the subjective value of the looked-at option or instead adds a constant, value-independent bias. To address this, we examined choice data from six eye-tracking studies ( Ns = 39, 44, 44, 36, 20, and 45, respectively) to characterize the interaction between value and gaze in the choice process. We found that the summed values of the options influenced response times in every data set and the gaze-choice correlation in most data sets, in line with an amplifying role of attention in the choice process. Our results suggest that this amplifying effect is more pronounced in tasks using large sets of familiar stimuli, compared with tasks using small sets of learned stimuli.

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Most cited references 28

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The time course of perceptual choice: the leaky, competing accumulator model.

M. Usher, J L McClelland (2001)

The time course of perceptual choice is discussed in a model of gradual, leaky, stochastic, and competitive information accumulation in nonlinear decision units. Special cases of the model match a classical diffusion process, but leakage and competition work together to address several challenges to existing diffusion, random walk, and accumulator models. The model accounts for data from choice tasks using both time-controlled (e.g., response signal) and standard reaction time paradigms and its adequacy compares favorably with other approaches. A new paradigm that controls the time of arrival of information supporting different choice alternatives provides further support. The model captures choice behavior regardless of the number of alternatives, accounting for the log-linear relation between reaction time and number of alternatives (Hick's law) and explains a complex pattern of visual and contextual priming in visual word identification.

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Visual fixations and the computation and comparison of value in simple choice.

Ian Krajbich, Carrie Armel, Antonio Rangel (2010)

Most organisms facing a choice between multiple stimuli will look repeatedly at them, presumably implementing a comparison process between the items' values. Little is known about the nature of the comparison process in value-based decision-making or about the role of visual fixations in this process. We created a computational model of value-based binary choice in which fixations guide the comparison process and tested it on humans using eye-tracking. We found that the model can quantitatively explain complex relationships between fixation patterns and choices, as well as several fixation-driven decision biases.

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Multialternative drift-diffusion model predicts the relationship between visual fixations and choice in value-based decisions.

Ian Krajbich, Antonio Rangel (2011)

How do we make decisions when confronted with several alternatives (e.g., on a supermarket shelf)? Previous work has shown that accumulator models, such as the drift-diffusion model, can provide accurate descriptions of the psychometric data for binary value-based choices, and that the choice process is guided by visual attention. However, the computational processes used to make choices in more complicated situations involving three or more options are unknown. We propose a model of trinary value-based choice that generalizes what is known about binary choice, and test it using an eye-tracking experiment. We find that the model provides a quantitatively accurate description of the relationship between choice, reaction time, and visual fixation data using the same parameters that were estimated in previous work on binary choice. Our findings suggest that the brain uses similar computational processes to make binary and trinary choices.