Selective Integration: An Attentional Theory of Choice Biases and Adaptive Choice

Human choice behavior shows a range of puzzling anomalies. Even simple binary choices are modified by accept/
reject framing and by the presence of decoy options, and they can exhibit circular (i.e., intransitive) patterns of
preferences. Each of these phenomena is incompatible with many standard models of choice but may provide crucial
clues concerning the elementary mental processes underpinning our choices. One promising theoretical account
proposes that choice-related information is selectively gathered through an attentionally limited window favoring goalconsistent
information. We review research showing attentional-mediated choice biases and present a computationally
explicit model—selective integration—that accounts for these biases