title: Local dynamics in decision making: The evolution of preference within and across decisions.
abstract: Within decisions, perceived alternatives compete until one is preferred. Across decisions, the playing field on which these alternatives compete evolves to favor certain alternatives. Mouse cursor trajectories provide rich continuous information related to such cognitive processes during decision making. In three experiments, participants learned to choose symbols to earn points in a discrimination learning paradigm and the cursor trajectories of their responses were recorded. Decisions between two choices that earned equally high-point rewards exhibited far less competition than decisions between choices that earned equally low-point rewards. Using positional coordinates in the trajectories, it was possible to infer a potential field in which the choice locations occupied areas of minimal potential. These decision spaces evolved through the experiments, as participants learned which options to choose. This visualisation approach provides a potential framework for the analysis of local dynamics in decision-making that could help mitigate both theoretical disputes and disparate empirical results.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland. denis.ohora@nuigalway.ie
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: O'Hora
authors.forename: Rick
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dale
authors.forename: Petri T
authors.initials: PT
authors.lastname: Piiroinen
authors.forename: Fionnuala
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Connolly
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time; D012201:Reward