Make a choice! Visual attention and choice behaviour in multialternative food choice situations

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between gazing behaviour and choice decision in multialternative forced choice tasks, focusing on the consistency across different food product groups including apple, beer, bread, chocolate, instant soup, salad, sausage, and soft drink. Each choice task consisted of pictures of four alternatives, similar in familiarity and liking ratings, of the corresponding product group. A Tobii T60 eye-tracker was used to present the stimuli and to analyse the gazing behaviour of 59 participants during decision-making. The results showed strong correlations between choice and gazing behaviour, in forms of more fixation counts, longer total dwell duration, and more dwell counts on the chosen alternative. No correlations for first fixation, time to first fixation, and first fixation duration were observed. These results were consistent across the eight tested product groups.