Attribute-guided attention is an adaptive mechanism for efficient search during naturalistic decision-making

<p>Many real-world decisions require selecting from large displays of options that vary along multiple attributes, as when choosing a product from a store shelf. Here, we examine how decision-makers navigate such displays and how search strategies vary as the number of options increases. In a large-scale mobile eye-tracking study (n &amp;gt; 200), participants shopped in a controlled mock grocery store and chose among varying set sizes of products across categories. Our descriptive analysis showed that participants used perceptually accessible attributes, particularly brand, to guide search. This attribute-based search increased in larger choice sets and was strongest in categories where brand was most visually distinct, and among individuals who rated brand as more important. Using an efficient search model based on Bayesian updating, we show that relying on accessible attributes is consistent with an adaptive strategy. Together, these results provide novel insight into how attribute-guided search supports naturalistic multi-option decision making.</p>