Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Aug 16;108(33):13852-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1101328108. Epub 2011 Aug 1.
How do we make decisions when confronted with several alternatives (e.g., on a supermarket shelf)? Previous work has shown that accumulator models, such as the drift-diffusion model, can provide accurate descriptions of the psychometric data for binary value-based choices, and that the choice process is guided by visual attention. However, the computational processes used to make choices in more complicated situations involving three or more options are unknown. We propose a model of trinary value-based choice that generalizes what is known about binary choice, and test it using an eye-tracking experiment. We find that the model provides a quantitatively accurate description of the relationship between choice, reaction time, and visual fixation data using the same parameters that were estimated in previous work on binary choice. Our findings suggest that the brain uses similar computational processes to make binary and trinary choices.
当面临多个选择（例如在超市货架上）时，我们如何做出决策？先前的研究表明，累积模型（如漂移-扩散模型）可以为基于二进制值的选择的心理测量数据提供准确的描述，并且选择过程受到视觉注意的指导。然而，用于在涉及三个或更多选项的更复杂情况下做出选择的计算过程是未知的。我们提出了一种基于三进制值的选择模型，该模型推广了关于二进制选择的知识，并使用眼动追踪实验对其进行了测试。我们发现，该模型使用在先前的二进制选择研究中估计的相同参数，对选择、反应时间和视觉固定数据之间的关系进行了定量准确的描述。我们的发现表明，大脑使用类似的计算过程来做出二进制和三进制选择。
