Figure 1.

Tasks used to assess economic principles underlying social attention. (a) Inter-temporal choice task. Subjects were given a choice between seeing an image for 1 s immediately (shorter/sooner, SS option) and seeing an equivalently attractive image for a longer duration in the future (longer/later, LL option). The number of stars for each option indicated attractiveness of image that would be shown if that option was selected. Delay following image was dynamically modified so that average image presentation rate remained constant. (b) Monetary choice task. Subjects were given a choice between a constant target and a variable target. Choice of constant target was followed by presentation of a grey square and a 500 ms sound. Choice of variable target was followed by presentation of a photo (attractiveness was changed in 100 trial superblocks) and a sound of 300–700 ms (duration was changed in 20 trial blocks). (c) Effort task. Subjects were briefly presented with a photo and then the screen went blank. Subjects could perform effort task (pressing space bar and F key with one finger in sequence) to obtain another brief view of the same image. Trial lasted 10 s and was immediately followed by a new trial.