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Updated: Sep 5, 2025

Measuring the Subjective Value of Risky and Ambiguous Options using Experimental Economics and Functional MRI Methods
Published on: September 19, 2012
Gaze-dependent evidence accumulation predicts multi-alternative risky choice behaviour
Felix Molter1,2,3, Armin W Thomas2,4,5, Scott A Huettel6,7
1School of Business & Economics, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Abstract:
Choices are influenced by gaze allocation during deliberation, so that fixating an alternative longer leads to increased probability of choosing it. Gaze-dependent evidence accumulation provides a parsimonious account of choices, response times and gaze-behaviour in many simple decision scenarios. Here, we test whether this framework can also predict more complex context-dependent patterns of choice in a three-alternative risky choice task, where choices and eye movements were subject to attraction and compromise effects. Choices were best described by a gaze-dependent evidence accumulation model, where subjective values of alternatives are discounted while not fixated. Finally, we performed a systematic search over a large model space, allowing us to evaluate the relative contribution of different forms of gaze-dependence and additional mechanisms previously not considered by gaze-dependent accumulation models. Gaze-dependence remained the most important mechanism, but participants with strong attraction effects employed an additional similarity-dependent inhibition mechanism found in other models of multi-alternative multi-attribute choice.
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