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Trends in Cognitive Sciences
ReviewHow Mouse-tracking Can Advance Social Cognitive Theory
Section snippets
The Emergence and Resolution of Conflict
Navigating the world requires us to make representations, categorizations, and decisions given limited or ambiguous information. These judgments and decisions are often complex, requiring us to integrate across many different, and sometimes competing, sources of information and value [1]. Central to such judgments and decisions therefore is the resolution of decision conflict (see Glossary) between multiple possible alternatives. This essential act of resolving (or failing to resolve) conflict,
Assessing Conflict: Traditional Approaches and Challenges
Theoretical investigations into conflict generally focus on two related questions. First, when does conflict arise – in other words, what are the contextual or individual factors that predict the magnitude of conflict for a given judgment or decision? The entire area of self-control, for instance, is predicated on the idea that some choices are especially difficult owing to the conflict between immediate versus delayed gratification (i.e., they present a considerable conflict 8, 9), and many
Overview of Mouse-Tracking
Although cognitive models of choice and categorization have historically assumed a sequential unfolding whereby motor output is initiated once a decision is reached, recent research suggests that these processes unfold in a largely overlapping manner [31]. This work has shown that motor movements are updated continuously to reflect underlying cognitive processing (2, 7, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, recently reviewed in [3]). This suggests that mouse trajectories can be used as a proxy to study the
Review of Recent Work
We next turn to recent advances using mouse-tracking to probe underlying mechanisms supporting categorization and decision-making – specifically, using mouse-tracking to more sensitively gauge conflict, or using mouse-tracking to understand the temporal unfolding and resolution of this conflict. Within these two approaches, we primarily focus on studies in two domains in which a growing body of research using both approaches to inform theories of the real-time processes supporting such
Summary and Limitations
Mouse-tracking offers a highly sensitive, real-time look into how conflict emerges and is resolved in judgments and decisions. The information contained in mouse-tracking offers an accessible, powerful, and unique way to test and advance theory about conflict in domains across cognitive and social psychology. These advances correspond to the two major methods of analyzing mouse trajectories. First, mouse-tracking can sensitively detect response conflict between two options in a given decision.
Concluding Remarks
Theoretical development in social cognition has outpaced the methods for probing the cognitive architecture underlying judgments and decisions. Using real-time methods such as mouse-tracking, researchers are now equipped to pursue a fine-grained understanding of how the mind processes and responds to complex information. Future work will continue to challenge and refine our conception of how the brain categorizes and makes decisions, with mouse-tracking as an essential tool for exploration.
Glossary
- Area under the curve (AUC)
- the amount of area between the actual trajectory and a straight trajectory.
- Dual-system theories
- a class of models in which two systems are posited to interact to give rise to judgments and decisions – a quick, irrational, automatic system (system I) influences judgments and decisions early on, following which a slow, rational, controlled system (system II) can come online (given motivation and ability) and inhibit the response of system I if need be.
- Dynamical frameworks
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