Cognitive and Neural Bases of Multi-Attribute, Multi-Alternative, Value-based Decisions

Abstract

Accumulation to threshold models describe the dynamics of decision making. They have been highly influential in perceptual decision making and begin to dominate research on value-based decisions. For simple perceptual choices, core mechanisms of these models, such as evidence accumulation and decisions threshold crossing, could be mapped onto a neural circuitry. Value-based choices, however, often require the comparison of multiple choice options along multiple attributes. Such decisions are prone to context effects that are inconsistent with economic conceptions of rationality. To accommodate the complexity of value-based decision making, a series of novel accumulation to threshold models that assume advanced component processes have been developed. Most recently, model-based neuroscience studies have started to link these component processes to their neural underpinnings.