Review
How Mouse-tracking Can Advance Social Cognitive Theory

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Highlights

Computer-mouse movements reflect underlying cognitive processes, and, by continuously measuring mouse movements while participants make a judgment or decision (i.e., mouse-tracking), researchers can get a real-time window into how such choices evolve.

Mouse-tracking has the potential to offer a sensitive measure of the conflict present between two response options, allowing researchers to test theoretical predictions about the antecedents and consequences of decisional conflict.

The rich temporal data offered by mouse-tracking allows testing of nuanced theories regarding how decisions evolve, and allow researchers to make specific predictions about the time-course of the evolution of a decision.

Recent research in social cognition – most notably in social categorization and self-control literatures – has begun to use mouse-tracking to predict and understand judgments and decisions that are complex and consequential.

Mouse-tracking – measuring computer-mouse movements made by participants while they choose between response options – is an emerging tool that offers an accessible, data-rich, and real-time window into how people categorize and make decisions. In the present article we review recent research in social cognition that uses mouse-tracking to test models and advance theory. In particular, mouse-tracking allows examination of nuanced predictions about both the nature of conflict (e.g., its antecedents and consequences) as well as how this conflict is resolved (e.g., how decisions evolve). We demonstrate how mouse-tracking can further our theoretical understanding by highlighting research in two domains − social categorization and self-control. We conclude with future directions and a discussion of the limitations of mouse-tracking as a method.

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.

Can

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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