Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We use hierarchical drift diffusion models to investigate theeffect of prominence in two-alternative multi-attributepreferential choice. We find that two types of prominenceeffects, option-based and attribute-based, both increase choiceprobabilities for options favored by prominence. However,model fits suggest that the two effects work through differentmechanisms. Altering choice option prominence leads to aresponse bias for the prominent option, whereas alteringattribute prominence leads to an evaluation bias for the optionthat is dominant on the prominent attribute. Our resultsillustrate how seemingly identical contextual factors can bedistinguished with the use of drift-diffusion modelling.