Preference in the harried eye of the beholder: the effect of time pressure and task motivation.

Abstract

We report a study in which eye tracking data were gathered to examine the impact of time-pressure and task motivation on the flow of visual attention during choice processing from a naturalistic stimulus-based product display. We find patterns of adaptation of visual attention to time pressure in terms of acceleration, filtration, and strategy shift that have not been reported previously. In addition we find, regardless of condition, strong correlation's between visual attention to the brands in the choice set and preference for the brands. Results are discussed in terms of strategic and non-strategic information acquisition during stimulus-based choice, and implications for attention theory are offered.