How top-down and bottom-up attention modulate risky choice

Vanunu, Yonatan; Hotaling, Jared M.; Pelley, Mike E. Le; Newell, Ben R.

doi:10.1073/pnas.2025646118

Cited by 28 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…One potential avenue is to contrast fixations to salient features early and late in learning. Studies have shown that overt attention initially orients to salient features, but that these effects can be overcome by increasing endogenous covert attention to task-relevant dimensions (Theeuwes, 2010; Vanunu et al, 2021). With AARM’s specification for unconstrained total attention (see the Attention Is Not a Zero-Sum Game section), it would be possible to specify a different baseline attention value for each dimension.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

As within, so without, as above, so below: Common mechanisms can support between- and within-trial category learning dynamics.

Weichart¹,

Galdo²,

Sloutsky³

et al. 2022

Psychological Review

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Two fundamental difficulties when learning novel categories are deciding (a) what information is relevant and (b) when to use that information. Although previous theories have specified how observers learn to attend to relevant dimensions over time, those theories have largely remained silent about how attention should be allocated on a within-trial basis, which dimensions of information should be sampled, and how the temporal order of information sampling influences learning. Here, we use the adaptive attention representation model (AARM) to demonstrate that a common set of mechanisms can be used to specify: (a) How the distribution of attention is updated between trials over the course of learning and (b) how attention dynamically shifts among dimensions within a trial. We validate our proposed set of mechanisms by comparing AARM’s predictions to observed behavior in four case studies, which collectively encompass different theoretical aspects of selective attention. We use both eye-tracking and choice response data to provide a stringent test of how attention and decision processes dynamically interact during category learning. Specifically, how does attention to selected stimulus dimensions gives rise to decision dynamics, and in turn, how do decision dynamics influence which dimensions are attended to via gaze fixations?

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

As within, so without, as above, so below: Common mechanisms can support between- and within-trial category learning dynamics.

Weichart¹,

Galdo²,

Sloutsky³

et al. 2022

Psychological Review

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show abstract

“…However, we did not measure direction and level of attention. Future studies could provide greater insight into these covert attentional processes using eye-tracking and other process-tracing techniques [ 34 , 99 , 100 ]. Advances in the joint modeling of behavioral and neural data [e.g., 10 , 101 ] may also provide novel avenues for elucidating the cognitive processes involved.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…eye-tracking and other process-tracing techniques [34,99,100]. Advances in the joint modeling of behavioral and neural data [e.g., 10,101] may also provide novel avenues for elucidating the cognitive processes involved.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Formalizing the fundamental Faustian bargain: Inefficacious decision-makers sacrifice their freedom of choice to coercive leaders for economic security

DeCaro

Hotaling

et al. 2022

PLoS ONE

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Individuals typically prefer the freedom to make their own decisions. Yet, people often trade their own decision control (procedural utility) to gain economic security (outcome utility). Decision science has not reconciled these observations. We examined how decision-makers’ efficacy and security perceptions influence when, why, and how individuals exchange procedural and outcome utility. Undergraduate adults (N = 77; Mage = 19.45 years; 73% female; 62% Caucasian, 13% African American) were recruited from the psychology participant pool at a midwestern U.S. metropolitan university. Participants made financial decisions in easy and hard versions of a paid card task resembling a standard gambling task, with a learning component. During half the trials, they made decisions with a No-Choice Manager who controlled their decisions, versus a Choice Manager who granted decision control. The hard task was designed to be too difficult for most participants, undermining their efficacy and security, and ensuring financial losses. The No-Choice Manager was designed to perform moderately well, ensuring financial gains. Participants felt greater outcome satisfaction (utility) for financial gains earned via Choice, but not losses. Participants (85%) preferred the Choice manager in the easy task but preferred the No-Choice Manager (56%) in the hard task. This change in preference for choice corresponded with self-efficacy and was mediated by perceived security. We used Decision Field Theory to develop potential cognitive models of these decisions. Preferences were best described by a model that assumed decision-makers initially prefer Choice, but update their preference based on loss-dependent attentional focus. When they earned losses (hard task), decision-makers focused more on economic payoffs (financial security), causing them to deemphasize procedural utility. Losses competed for attention, pulling attention toward economic survivability and away from the inherent value of choice. Decision-makers are more likely to sacrifice freedom of choice to leaders they perceive as efficacious to alleviate perceived threats to economic security.

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“…Because the quantity of information in many decisions far outstrips an individual's information processing capacity, selective attention is required to maintain representations of information one piece at a time, essentially highlighting different frames at different times during choice (Kiyonaga & Egner, 2013;Moore & Zirnsak, 2017;Myers, Stokes, & Nobre, 2017;Smith & Krajbich, 2019). While this can theoretically result in a process of sequential frame selection using rational goal-driven attention, attention is also frequently exogenously constrained by the environment: What is attended is as often as not stimulus-driven as opposed to goaldirected (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002;Vanunu, Hotaling, Le Pelley, & Newell, 2021). Importantly, these attentional processes may interact in dynamic ways over time: the decision context primes particular frames of evaluation (Diederich & Trueblood, 2018;Maier, Raja Beharelle, Polanía, Ruff, & Hare, 2020), prior frames differentially enhance and constrain the accessibility of subsequent framings (Johnson, Häubl, & Keinan, 2007;Nook, Satpute, & Ochsner, 2021), and executed decisions frame and bias post-choice evaluation (Chaxel, Russo, & Kerimi, 2013;Navajas, Bahrami, & Latham, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rational framing effects: A multidisciplinary case

Bermúdez

2022

Behav Brain Sci

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Frames and framing make one dimension of a decision problem particularly salient. In the simplest case, frames prime responses (as in, e.g., the Asian Disease paradigm, where the gain frame primes risk-aversion and the loss frame primes risk-seeking). But in more complicated situations frames can function reflectively, by making salient particular reason-giving aspects of a thing, outcome, or action. For Shakespeare's Macbeth, for example, his feudal commitments are salient in one frame, while downplayed in another in favor of his personal ambition. The role of frames in reasoning can give rise to rational framing effects. Macbeth can prefer fulfilling his feudal duty to murdering the king, while also preferring bravely taking the throne to fulfilling his feudal duty, knowing full well that bravely taking the throne just is murdering the king. Such patterns of quasi-cyclical preferences can be correct and appropriate from the normative perspective of how one ought to reason. The paper explores three less dramatic types of rational framing effects: (1) Consciously framing and reframing long-term goals and short-term temptations can be important tools for self-control; (2) In the prototypical social interactions modeled by game theory, allowing for rational framing effects solves longstanding problems, such as the equilibrium selection problem and explaining the appeal of non-equilibrium solutions (e.g., the cooperative solution in the Prisoner's Dilemma). (3) Processes for resolving interpersonal conflicts and breaking discursive deadlock, because they involve internalizing multiple and incompatible ways of framing actions and outcomes, in effect create rational framing effects.

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How top-down and bottom-up attention modulate risky choice

Cited by 28 publications

References 32 publications

As within, so without, as above, so below: Common mechanisms can support between- and within-trial category learning dynamics.

As within, so without, as above, so below: Common mechanisms can support between- and within-trial category learning dynamics.

Formalizing the fundamental Faustian bargain: Inefficacious decision-makers sacrifice their freedom of choice to coercive leaders for economic security

Rational framing effects: A multidisciplinary case

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