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Category: Project

Description: R and Matlab scripts for data manipulation, analysis, and plotting for Studies 1 and 2 for the paper titled Attention biases preferential choice by enhancing value. Here is the 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, attention biased choice and eye movement pattern in the preferential decision more than during the perceptual analog. Similarly, in a controlled-viewing task, attention had a larger effect on choice in the preferential decision than its perceptual analog. Across these experimental manipulations of attention, choice and eye-tracking data provide converging evidence that attention enhances value, and computational modeling further supports this attention-induced valuation hypothesis. A possible explanation for our results is via a normalization mechanism where attention induces a gain modulation on an option's representation at both the sensory and value processing levels.