Attention biases preferential choice by enhancing an option's value

Abstract

Does attending to an option lead to liking it? Though attention induced valuation is often hypothesized, evidence for this causal link has remained elusive. We test this hypothesis across two studies by manipulating attention during a preferential decision and its perceptual analog. In a free-viewing task, we found attention biased choice and eye movement pattern in the preferential decision more than during the perceptual analog. In a controlled-viewing task, we again found attention had a larger effect on choice in the preferential decision than its perceptual analog. Computational modeling of the data reveals that attention impacted preference by discounting the unattended option’s value. These results support the attention-induced valuation hypothesis. We suggest that attention impacts preference via a normalization process where an option's representation is scaled by its spatial and temporal neighbors. Attention provides a gain modulation on this representation at the sensory and value processing levels.