Attention and Choice Across Domains
Loading...
Date
2017-03
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
When people are faced with a decision, they tend to choose the option that draws their attention. This begs the question of whether a general relationship exists between attention and choice. Here, we examine the consistency of the decision-making process across different domains using decisions over foods, risky gambles, and social preferences. To investigate these connections between attention and choices, we tracked subjects’ eye movements, response times, and decisions. As in previous work, fixation durations do not correlate with subjective value, but they do predict choices. Across tasks, there is remarkable consistency: a 0.5s looking-time advantage for one side translates to an increase in choice probability of ~25%, and when the alternatives are equally valued, the probability that the last-fixated item is chosen is ~70%. In addition to the influence of attention to each alternative on decision making, attention to different attributes (within an alternative) also influences the choice outcome. As anticipated, participants with strong attentional influences in one task (measured by fitted logistic regression and attentional drift diffusion models) are likely to have strong attentional influences in the other tasks. The influence of attention on choice also correlates with individuals’ independently-measured spatial attention spans. These connections provide support for a common attention-based decision-making process responsible for choice across a variety of domains.
Description
Social and Behavioral Sciences; Social Work; Law: 2nd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)
Keywords
Decision making, Attention, Computational Modeling, Eye tracking