title: The downside of choice: Having a choice benefits enjoyment, but at a cost to efficiency and time in visual search.
abstract: The efficiency of how people search for an item in visual search has, traditionally, been thought to depend on bottom-up or top-down guidance cues. However, recent research has shown that the rate at which people visually search through a display is also affected by cognitive strategies. In this study, we investigated the role of choice in visual search, by asking whether giving people a choice alters both preference for a cognitively neutral task and search behavior. Two visual search conditions were examined: one in which participants were given a choice of visual search task (the choice condition), and one in which participants did not have a choice (the no-choice condition). The results showed that the participants in the choice condition rated the task as both more enjoyable and likeable than did the participants in the no-choice condition. However, despite their preferences, actual search performance was slower and less efficient in the choice condition than in the no-choice condition (Exp. 1). Experiment 2 showed that the difference in search performance between the choice and no-choice conditions disappeared when central executive processes became occupied with a task-switching task. These data concur with a choice-impaired hypothesis of search, in which having a choice leads to more motivated, active search involving executive processes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK. m.a.kunar@warwick.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Melina A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Kunar
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
authors.forename: Surani
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ariyabandu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
authors.forename: Zaffran
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Jami
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D057181:Pleasure; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cognitive and attentional control; Decision making; Visual search