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Poster Session C: Friday, August 15, 2:00 – 5:00 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

Attention in value-based choice: Active and passive uncertainty reduction mechanisms

Ruby Schlayer-Westbrook¹, Zhusui Li, Qiuyao Fan, Arkady Konovalov, Frederick Callaway, Romy Froemer¹; ¹University of Birmingham

Presenter: Ruby Schlayer-Westbrook

The more one attends to an option, the more likely one is to choose it. This gaze benefit has been formalized as a discounting of unattended options in influential models of decision-making.Recent work shows that the attention benefit vanishes when attention is manipulated externally rather than freely allocated. Here, we explicitly compare free viewing condition, and externally manipulated attention (sequential presentation). Consistent with model predictions, we find strong gaze effects on choice only in free viewing, where people prioritized higher value options. Importantly, this attention prioritization is associated with greater choice efficiency, with more consistent and faster choices. Taken together, our results highlight two ways in which attention shapes choice. First, attention affords option-level value uncertainty reduction by supporting information sampling and value estimation on any attended options. Second, attention affords efficient choice-level uncertainty reduction through prioritization of goal-relevant options.

Topic Area: Reward, Value & Social Decision Making

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