The neuroeconomics of individual differences in saccadic decisions

Abstract

Active exploration of the visual environment requires choosing the next gaze target, which has been characterized as depending on attentional biases and on oculomotor biases. However, disentangling these two factors has provided contradictory results. Here, we conceptualize active gaze selection as a decision-making process in the context of neuroeconomics, allowing us to employ a new saccadic preference elicitation experiment and to quantify behavioral biases with a random utility model. Subjects showed similar preferences for shorter amplitude saccades in line with previous research and shared a preference for saccades back towards the previous gaze location, contrary to numerous reports on spatial “inhibition of return”. Surprisingly, the experiment revealed marked individual differences in the preferences for global gaze directions, which were stable across most participants after one week. Thus, this study provides the first measurement of intrinsic saccadic utilities independently of spatial image properties and quantitatively dissociates stable individual differences in global gaze selection.