High overall values mitigate gaze-related effects in perceptual and preferential choices.

Abstract

A growing literature has shown that people tend to make faster decisions when choosing between two high-intensity or high-utility options than when choosing between two less-intensity or low-utility options. Yet, the underlying cognitive mechanisms of this effect of overall value (OV) on response times (RT) remains controversial, partially due to inconsistent findings of OV effects on accuracy, but also due to the lack of process-tracing studies testing this effect. Here, we set out to fill this gap by testing and modeling the influence of OV on choices, RT, and eye-movements in both perceptual as well as preferential decisions in a preregistered eye-tracking experiment (N=61). Across perceptual and preferential tasks, we observed a significant and consistently negative correlation between OV and RT, replicating previous work. Accuracy tended to increase with OV, reaching significance in preferential choices only. Eye-tracking analyses revealed a reduction of different gaze-related effects under high OV: a reduced tendency to choose the longer fixated option in perceptual choice and a reduced tendency to choose the last fixated option in preferential choice. Modeling these data with the attentional Drift Diffusion Model (aDDM) showed that the non-fixated option value was discounted least in the high OV condition, confirming that higher OV might mitigate the impact of gaze on choices. Our results suggest that overall value jointly affects behavior and gaze influences and offer a mechanistic account for the puzzling phenomenon that decisions between options of higher OV tend to be faster but not less accurate.

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