Judgment as a component decision process for choosing between sequentially available alternatives

Choice alternatives are frequently presented as multidimensional descriptions. In some cases the alternatives can be looked at together, While in other cases the alternatives are located i n different places and can only be inspected i n sequence. For example, the products offered i n a store are simultaneously available to the purchaser, whereas the information about products i n different stores must be processed i n sequence, possibly separated by some unrelated cognitive act i v i t y such as finding the way to the next store. This differential a v a i l a b i l i t y of the information about the alternatives could influence the cognitive processes which determine a choice. For simultaneously available alternatives, dimensional comparisons are usually applied to derive a choice ( Russo & Dosher, 1983). However, dimensional processing could lead to a high cognitive load for sequentialy presented alternatives. Since people have limited capacity for processing information, they tend to apply decision procedures which reduce this cognitive load. To reduce the cognitive effort a strategy involving overall judgments of each alternative and a subsequent comparison of the overall judgments could be applied instead. In the present paper, the criterion dependent choice models designed to explain the selectivity and adaptiveness of human choice processes (Schmalhofer, Albert, Aschenbrenner & Gertzen, 1986) are used to analyze the effort and quality of two different choice procedures. For sequentially and simultaneously available alternatives dimensional comparisons and overall judgments w i l l be analyzed as component processes in binary choices. The results of this analysis w i l l then be compared to the results of an