Evidence from consumer research indicates that people tend to focus their attention on options with which they are familiar; for this reason, they are also more likely to choose them. To study this phenomenon axiomatically, we extend the standard choice data to specify the timing of choices. This allows us to consider several (nested) time-evolving, experience-based choice models. Specifically, the agent in our theory first considers only the subset of available options with which he is familiar, and only if none of the options in this subset is satisfying (according to a fixed threshold) does he consider the entire possibility set. Importantly, we allow the set of familiar options to expand as the agent acquires experience. We provide choice-theoretic foundations for maximizing a single preference relation under this dynamic, familiarity-based attention, and show how one can reveal from the observed behavior an agent’s preferences and his threshold level. We also provide a comparative measure of preference for familiar options that is observable from choice and relate it to our main representation.

消费者研究的证据表明，人们倾向于将注意力集中在自己熟悉的选择上。因此，他们也更有可能选择它们。为了公理地研究这种现象，我们扩展了标准选择数据以指定选择的时间。这使我们可以考虑几个（嵌套的）时间演变的，基于经验的选择模型。具体而言，我们理论中的主体首先仅考虑他熟悉的可用选项的子集，并且只有当该子集中的所有选项都不满足（根据固定阈值）时，他才考虑整个可能性集。重要的是，随着代理获得经验，我们允许扩展熟悉的选项集。我们提供了选择理论基础，以在这种动态情况下最大化单个偏好关系，基于熟悉度的注意力，并说明如何从观察到的行为中揭示代理人的偏好及其阈值水平。我们还提供了对熟悉选项的偏好的比较度量，从选择中可以观察到，并将其与我们的主要代表联系起来。