Decision makers attend more to preferred choice options and to the ultimately chosen option, but does visual attention influence preferences and choice? Several theories suggest that attention has a causal effect on preferences and choice and a growing number of studies have examined the question with experimental methods. However, the evidence for an effect of attention on choice is mixed and highly contended. To advance the debate on the role of attention in decision making, we meta-analyze studies that manipulate attention-to-choice options and measure the effect on 2-alternative preferential choices. We identify 3 different methods for manipulating attention and find that studies manipulating total exposure time enhance choices the most, P = .541, 95% CI [.523, .560], p , .001, followed by studies controlling the location of the last fixation, P = .532, 95% CI [.518, .547], p , .001. Studies manipulating the location of the first fixation do not differ from chance level choice proportions, P = .507, 95% CI [0.497, 0.516], p = .18. The PET-PEESE analysis suggests a small degree of publication bias which results in a slight reduction of effect sizes. A meta-regression with absolute attention difference as predictor confirms the robustness of the findings. Our findings show the relevance of assuming an effect of attention on choice, but also indicate a need for further model development to account for the complete pattern of attention effects.

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Attending a location in space facilitates responses to targets at that location when the time between cue and target is short. Certain types of exogenous cues – such as sudden peripheral onsets – have been described as reflexive and automatic. Recent studies however, have been showing many cases where exogenous cues are less automatic than previously believed and do not always result in facilitation. A lack of the behavioral facilitation, however, does not automatically necessitate a lack of underlying attention to that location. We test exogenous cueing in two experiments where facilitation is and is not likely to be observed with saccadic responses. We also test alternate measures linked to the allocation of attention such as saccadic curvature, microsaccades and pupil size. As expected, we find early facilitation as measured by saccadic reaction time when CTOAs are predictable but not when they are randomized within a block. We find no impact of the cue on microsaccade direction for either experiment, and only a slight dip in the frequency of microsaccades after the cue. We do find that change in pupil size to the cue predicts the magnitude of the validity effect, but only in the experiment where facilitation was observed. In both experiments, we observed a tendency for saccadic curvature to deviate away from the cued location and this was stronger for early CTOAs and toward vertical targets. Overall, we find that only change in pupil size is consistent with observed facilitation. Saccadic curvature is influenced by the onset of the cue, buts its direction is indicative of oculomotor inhibition whether we see RT facilitation or not. Microsaccades were not diagnostic in either experiment. Finally, we see little to no evidence of attention at the cued location in any additional measures when facilitation of saccadic responses is absent.

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