Reflexive Activation of Monoracial Categories During Multiracial Categorization.

Previous research has examined the real-time cognitive processes underlying perceivers' ability to resolve racial ambiguity into monoracial categorizations, but such processes for multiracial categorizations are less clear. Using a novel, three-choice mouse-tracking paradigm, we found that when perceivers categorized faces as multiracial their hand movements revealed an initial attraction to a monoracial category (study 1). Moreover, exposure to multiracial individuals moderated these effects. When measured (Study 2) or manipulated (Study 3), multiracial exposure reduced monoracial category activation and activation occurred for both morphed and real multiracial faces (Study 4). Together, the findings suggest that multiracial categorizations emerge from dynamic competition between relatively more accessible monoracial categories and a less-accessible multiracial category, which is attenuated through greater exposure to multiracial targets. This research is the first to chart out the real-time dynamics underlying multiracial categorizations and offers a new theoretical account of this increasingly common form of social categorization.

Explicit and implicit cognitive processes of the public towards people who stutter.

PURPOSE: The Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes - Stuttering (POSHA-S, St. Louis, 2013) was developed as a standard measure of public attitudes about people who stutter. As with any survey-based methods, threats to validity may occur because of social desirability bias. Using computer mouse-tracking, we were interested in observing changes in cognition that are manifested in intentionality through action by evaluating underlying cognitive processes that drive social judgments of people who stutter. METHODS: Twenty-two women, 1 non-binary person, and 47 men reported using a computer mouse to complete an online, remote, and modified version of the POSHA-S. Responses were categorized as correct/helpful or incorrect/unhelpful relative to each component of the POSHA-S and were used as measures of explicit cognitive processes. Computer-mouse trajectory metrics, including area under the curve (AUC) and reaction time (RT), were used to measure implicit cognitive processes. RESULTS: Although participants' explicit responses were significantly more likely to be correct/helpful than incorrect/unhelpful, with endorsement of correct/helpful prompts 77 % of the time, participants also endorsed incorrect/unhelpful prompts more than half (i.e., 52 %) of the time. Familiarity with people who stutter was associated with disagreeing with incorrect/unhelpful prompts. As indicated by greater AUC, participants exhibited significantly more implicit cognitive processes indicating competition when responding "disagree" compared to "agree", regardless of whether the prompts were correct/helpful or incorrect/unhelpful. Similarly, participants took significantly longer to respond to prompts with "disagree" rather than "agree". CONCLUSION: The findings of this study offer evidence of participants reporting cognitive processes that are overall more correct/helpful than incorrect/unhelpful, in their explicit responses to the dichotomous response tasks of the POSHA-S. However, these findings are tempered by evidence of a tendency to agree with statements in the measure and suggest the need for further research to increase understanding of how to measure and improve explicit and implicit cognitive processes related to people who stutter.

Embodied sequential sampling models and dynamic neural fields for decision-making: Why hesitate between two when a continuum is the answer.

As two alternative options in a forced choice task are separated by design, two classes of computational models of decision-making have thrived independently in the literature for nearly five decades. While sequential sampling models (SSM) focus on response times and keypresses in binary decisions in experimental paradigms, dynamic neural fields (DNF) focus on continuous sensorimotor dimensions and tasks found in perception and robotics. Recent attempts have been made to address limitations in their application to other domains, but strong similarities and compatibility between prominent models from both classes were hardly considered. This article is an attempt at bridging the gap between these classes of models, and simultaneously between disciplines and paradigms relying on binary or continuous responses. A unifying formulation of representative SSM and DNF equations is proposed, varying the number of units which interact and compete to reach a decision. The embodiment of decisions is also considered by coupling cognitive and sensorimotor processes, enabling the model to generate decision trajectories at trial level. The resulting mechanistic model is therefore able to target different paradigms (forced choices or continuous response scales) and measures (final responses or dynamics). The validity of the model is assessed statistically by fitting empirical distributions obtained from human participants in moral decision-making mouse-tracking tasks, for which both dichotomous and nuanced responses are meaningful. Comparing equations at the theoretical level, and model parametrizations at the empirical level, the implications for psychological decision-making processes, as well as the fundamental assumptions and limitations of models and paradigms are discussed.

Working memory flips the direction of serial bias through memory-based decision.

Reported perception of a new stimulus is either attracted toward or repelled away from task-irrelevant prior stimuli. While prevailing theories propose that the opposing serial biases may stem from distinct stages of information processing, the exact role of working memory (WM) in the serial bias remains unclear despite its consistent involvement in nearly all pertinent studies. Additionally, it is not well understood whether this bias is primarily driven by the biased representation itself or by the decision-making process for the new stimulus. In the present study, we used an orientation delayed estimation paradigm with an attention-demanding intervening task, designed to disrupt the maintenance of stimulus information to investigate the role of WM in serial bias. In the analysis, we scrutinized the trajectory of mouse reports and response time to investigate how the response unfolds over time. Our findings indicate that the serial bias went from repulsive to attractive when WM maintenance was interrupted by the intervening task, and that the associated response trajectories and response time exhibited patterns that cannot be explained by the biased representation alone. These results demonstrate that the task-irrelevant prior stimulus influences the decision for the new stimulus, with the direction of the bias being determined by attentional demand during WM maintenance, thereby placing significant constraints on existing theories on the serial bias effect.

Conflict in moral and nonmoral decision making: an empirical study coupled with a computational model.

While moral psychology research has extensively studied decision making using moral dilemmas, such high-conflict situations may not fully represent all moral decisions. Moreover, most studies on the effect of conflict have focused on nonmoral decisions, and it is unclear how it applies to the moral realm. The present mixed-method research investigates how conflict impacts moral compared to nonmoral decision making. In a preregistered empirical study ( N = 42 ), participants made moral and nonmoral decisions with varying levels of conflict while their mouse trajectories were recorded. Results indicate that moral decisions were more stable in the presence of conflict, while still seeking compromise. In addition, decisions were more affected when conflict got higher. Mouse-tracking data further indicate that some factors are impacting the decision process earlier than others, supporting the relevance of tracing methods to dig into finer-grained decision dynamics. We also present a computational model that aims to capture decision mechanisms and how conflict and morality influence decision making. The model uses dynamic neural fields coupled with sensorimotor control to map a continuous decision space. Two model versions were compared: one with greater perceptual weight for moral information, and another with earlier processing of moral versus nonmoral information. The simulated data more successfully reproduced empirical patterns for the second version, thus providing insights into the underlying decision processes for both moral and nonmoral decisions, in the presence of conflict or not.

A Dress Is Not a Yes: Towards an Indirect Mouse-Tracking Measure of Men's Overreliance on Global Cues in the Context of Sexual Flirting.

Assessing another person's intention to flirt and, relatedly, their sexual interest is based on the interpretation and weighting of global (e.g., clothing style) and specific (e.g., facial expression) cues. Since cue incongruency increases the risk of erroneous judgments and thus can entail undesirable outcomes for both parties involved, detection of an individual propensity for overly relying on global (sexual) rather than specific (affective) cues is of social and clinical-forensic importance. Using a purpose-designed and pre-validated stimulus set, we developed a mouse-tracking task as an indirect behavioral measure for males' overreliance on global cues (OGC) in the context of sexual flirting. In a convenience sample of heterosexual cisgender men (N = 79), experimentally induced sexual arousal was shown to increase the probability of OGC as a function of task difficulty (i.e., congruent or incongruent combinations of global and specific cues displayed by a potential female flirting partner). While error rate and reaction time proved to be indicators of OGC, the spatial measures maximum deviation and area under the curve provided less consistent results. In addition, error rate suggested sex drive and sexual objectification to act as moderators of the relationship between sexual arousal and OGC. Exploratory analysis further revealed a theoretically meaningful pattern of correlations between mouse-tracking measures and self-report measures of problematic (e.g., disinhibited, exploitative) sexuality. Implications of the results are discussed and a framework for differentiating potential causes of OGC (i.e., misperception, lack of self-control, and egocentric hedonism) is proposed.

Predicting Hand Movements With Distributional Semantics: Evidence From Mouse-Tracking.

Although mouse-tracking has been taken as a real-time window on different aspects of human decision-making processes, whether purely semantic information affects response conflict at the level of motor output as measured through mouse movements is still unknown. Here, across two experiments, we investigated the effects of semantic knowledge by predicting participants' performance in a standard keyboard task and in a mouse-tracking task through distributional semantics, a usage-based modeling approach to meaning. In Experiment 1, participants were shown word pairs and were required to perform a two-alternative forced choice task selecting either the more abstract or the more concrete word, using standard keyboard presses. In Experiment 2, participants performed the same task, yet this time response selection was achieved by moving the computer mouse. Results showed that the involvement of semantic components in the task at hand is observable using both standard reaction times (Experiment 1) as well as using indexes extracted from mouse trajectories (Experiment 2). In particular, mouse trajectories reflected the response conflict and its temporal evolution, with a larger deviation for increasing word semantic relatedness. These findings support the validity of mouse-tracking as a method to detect deep and implicit decision-making features. Additionally, by demonstrating that a usage-based model of meaning can account for the different degrees of cognitive conflict associated with task achievement, these findings testify the impact of the human semantic memory on decision-making processes.

Markerless Mouse Tracking for Social Experiments.

Automated behavior quantification in socially interacting animals requires accurate tracking. While many methods have been very successful and highly generalizable to different settings, issues of mistaken identities and lost information on key anatomical features are common, although they can be alleviated by increased human effort in training or post-processing. We propose a markerless video-based tool to simultaneously track two interacting mice of the same appearance in controlled settings for quantifying behaviors such as different types of sniffing, touching, and locomotion to improve tracking accuracy under these settings without increased human effort. It incorporates conventional handcrafted tracking and deep-learning-based techniques. The tool is trained on a small number of manually annotated images from a basic experimental setup and outputs body masks and coordinates of the snout and tail-base for each mouse. The method was tested on several commonly used experimental conditions including bedding in the cage and fiberoptic or headstage implants on the mice. Results obtained without any human corrections after the automated analysis showed a near elimination of identities switches and a ∼15% improvement in tracking accuracy over pure deep-learning-based pose estimation tracking approaches. Our approach can be optionally ensembled with such techniques for further improvement. Finally, we demonstrated an application of this approach in studies of social behavior of mice by quantifying and comparing interactions between pairs of mice in which some lack olfaction. Together, these results suggest that our approach could be valuable for studying group behaviors in rodents, such as social interactions.

Keeping track of time: Horizontal spatial biases for hours, days, and months.

In many Western cultures, the processing of temporal words related to the past and to the future is associated with left and right space, respectively - a phenomenon known as the horizontal Mental Time Line (MTL). While this mapping is apparently quite ubiquitous, its regularity and consistency across different types of temporal concepts remain to be determined. Moreover, it is unclear whether such spatial mappings are an essential and early constituent of concept activation. In the present study, we used words denoting time units at different scales (hours of the day, days of the week, months of the year) associated with either left space (e.g., 9 a.m., Monday, February) or right space (e.g., 8 p.m., Saturday, November) as cues in a line bisection task. Fifty-seven healthy adults listened to temporal words and then moved a mouse cursor to the perceived midpoint of a horizontally presented line. We measured movement trajectories, initial line intersection coordinates, and final bisection response coordinates. We found movement trajectory displacements for left- vs. right-biasing hour and day cues. Initial line intersections were biased specifically by month cues, while final bisection responses were biased specifically by hour cues. Our findings offer general support to the notion of horizontal space-time associations and suggest further investigation of the exact chronometry and strength of this association across individual time units.

The competition dynamics of approach and avoidance motivations following interpersonal transgression.

Two behavioral motivations coexist in transgressors following an interpersonal transgression-approaching and compensating the victim and avoiding the victim. Little is known about how these motivations arise, compete, and drive transgressors' decisions. The present study adopted a social interaction task to manipulate participants' (i.e., the transgressor) responsibility for another's (i.e., the victim) monetary loss and measure the participants' tradeoff between compensating the victim and avoiding face-to-face interactions with the victim. Following each transgression, participants used a computer mouse to choose between two options differing in the amount of compensation to the victim and the probability of face-to-face contact with the victim. Results showed that as participants' responsibility increased, 1) the decision weights on contact avoidance relative to compensation increased, and 2) the onset of the contact-avoidance attribute was expedited and that of the compensation attribute was delayed. These results demonstrate how competing social motivations following transgression evolve and determine social decision-making and shed light on how social-affective state modulates the dynamics of decision-making in general.

Hand Motions Reveal Attentional Status and Subliminal Semantic Processing: A Mouse-Tracking Technique.

Theories of embodied cognition suggest that hand motions and cognition are closely interconnected. An emerging technique of tracking how participants move a computer mouse (i.e., the mouse-tracking technique) has shown advantages over the traditional response time measurement to detect implicit cognitive conflicts. Previous research suggests that attention is essential for subliminal processing to take place at a semantic level. However, this assumption is challenged by evidence showing the presence of subliminal semantic processing in the near-absence of attention. The inconsistency of evidence could stem from the insufficient sensitivity in the response time measurement. Therefore, we examined the role of attention in subliminal semantic processing by analyzing participants' hand motions using the mouse-tracking technique. The results suggest that subliminal semantic processing is not only enhanced by attention but also occurs when attention is disrupted, challenging the necessity of facilitated top-down attention for subliminal semantic processing, as claimed by a number of studies. In addition, by manipulating the color of attentional cues, our experiment shows that the cue color per se could influence participants' response patterns. Overall, the current study suggests that attentional status and subliminal semantic processing can be reliably revealed by temporal-spatial features extracted from cursor motion trajectories.

Mouse tracking performance: A new approach to analyzing continuous mouse tracking data.

Mouse tracking is an important source of data in cognitive science. Most contemporary mouse tracking studies use binary-choice tasks and analyze the curvature or velocity of an individual mouse movement during an experimental trial as participants select from one of the two options. However, there are many types of mouse tracking data available beyond what is produced in a binary-choice task, including naturalistic data from web users. In order to utilize these data, cognitive scientists need tools that are robust to the lack of trial-by-trial structure in most normal computer tasks. We use singular value decomposition (SVD) and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) to analyze whole time series of unstructured mouse movement data. We also introduce a new technique for describing two-dimensional mouse traces as complex-valued time series, which allows SVD and DFA to be applied in a straightforward way without losing important spatial information. We find that there is useful information at the level of whole time series, and we use this information to predict performance in an online task. We also discuss how the implications of these results can advance the use of mouse tracking research in cognitive science.

How robust are egocentric and altercentric interference effects in social cognition? a test with explicit and implicit versions of a continuous false belief task.

It has been long assumed that meta-representational theory of mind (ToM) -our ability to ascribe mental states to ourselves and other people- emerges around age four as indicated in performance on explicit verbal false belief tasks. In contrast, newer studies assessing false belief understanding with implicit, non-verbal measures suggest that some form of ToM may be present even in infancy. But these studies now face replication issues, and it remains unclear whether they can provide robust evidence for implicit ToM. One line of research on implicit ToM, however, may remain promising: Studies that tap so-called altercentric biases. Such biases occur when agents in their judgments about the world are influenced (perform slower, more error-prone) in light of another agent's deviating perspective even if that perspective is completely irrelevant to the task; they thus can be seen as indicators of spontaneous and implicit ToM. Altercentric biases are the mirror images of egocentric biases (agents are influenced by their own perspective when evaluating another agent's deviating perspective). In three studies with adults, we aimed to tap both egocentric and altercentric interference effects within the same task format. We used the so-called Sandbox task, a false belief task with continuous locations. In Study 1, we tested an online adaptation of the Sandbox task, which we also used to explore potential cross-cultural differences in these biases. Studies 2 and 3 combined the Sandbox task with mouse-tracking measures. These studies revealed neither egocentric nor altercentric biases. These null results are discussed with regard to the question whether absence of evidence here may present evidence of absence of such spontaneous perspective-taking biases or merely false negatives.

Food induced distractibility in restrictive anorexia nervosa: Different motor patterns for different foods as revealed by a mouse tracker evaluation.

An altered automatic processing of food stimuli may contribute to the maintenance of calorie restriction in patients with restrictive Anorexia Nervosa (AN-R). The present study aimed to assess whether task-irrelevant food distractors elicited a different interference effect in the motor actions of patients with AN-R compared to healthy controls (HC). 40 patients with acute AN-R and 40 HC performed an irrelevant distractor task in which they were required to perform a reaching movement from a starting point to a green dot, while an irrelevant distractor (a high-calorie food, low-calorie food, or neutral object) was presented in the middle of the screen. Mouse trajectories and response times (RT) were recorded. The analyses conducted on the kinematic variables revealed that while the trajectories of HC veered similarly toward the three categories of stimuli, AN-R patients showed an increased deviation toward low-calorie foods and a reduced deviation toward high-calorie foods compared to neutral objects. No significant results emerged as regards RT. The pattern of responses observed in patients with AN-R (deviation increased toward low-calorie and reduced toward high-calorie) is consistent with their eating habits and may thus represent an implicit mechanism sustaining calorie restriction in patients with AN-R.

Mindreading by body: incorporating mediolateral balance and mouse-tracking measures to examine the motor basis of adults' false-belief tracking.

The role played by motor representations in tracking others' belief-based actions remains unclear. In experiment 1, the dynamics of adults' anticipatory mediolateral motor activity (leftwards-rightwards leaning on a balance board) as well as hand trajectories were measured as they attempted to help an agent who had a true or false belief about an object's location. Participants' leaning was influenced by the agent's belief about the target's location when the agent was free to act but not when she was motorically constrained. However, the hand trajectories participants produced to provide a response were not modulated by the other person's beliefs. Therefore, we designed a simplified second experiment in which participants were instructed to click as fast as possible on the location of a target object. In experiment 2, mouse-movements deviated from an ideal direct path to the object location, with trajectories that were influenced by the location in which the agent falsely believed the object to be located. These experiments highlight that information about an agent's false-belief can be mapped onto the motor system of a passive observer, and that there are situations in which the motor system plays an important role in accurate belief-tracking.

The temporal development of memory processes in source monitoring: An investigation with mouse tracking.

The present study investigated whether we first remember an item (e.g., a word itself) and then its source (e.g., position on the screen) or whether the retrieval of item and source information can (partially) overlap. Participants were tested on the source either in immediate sequence to item recognition (as standard in source-monitoring research) or following as a separate block after full completion of the item recognition test to separate these processes in time, providing a baseline. Using the mouse-tracking procedure during the item and source tests, we analyzed how item and source decisions unfolded qualitatively over time. Despite no significant difference in the aggregated trajectory curvatures, more thorough analyses based on the individual trajectories revealed differences across the test formats. In the standard format, trajectories were less curved in the source than in the item test. In contrast, in the blocked format, this difference was in the other direction with source showing more curved trajectories than item. Alternative interpretations of mouse-trajectory curvatures on the source-monitoring paradigm and what their difference may imply for item and source processing are discussed.

Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions.

Past research indicates that patients' reports of pain are often met with skepticism and that observers tend to underestimate patients' pain. The mechanisms behind these biases are not yet fully understood. One relevant domain of inquiry is the interaction between the emotional valence of a stranger's expression and the onlooker's trustworthiness judgment. The emotion overgeneralization hypothesis posits that when facial cues of valence are clear, individuals displaying negative expressions (e.g., disgust) are perceived as less trustworthy than those showing positive facial expressions (e.g., happiness). Accordingly, we hypothesized that facial expressions of pain (like disgust) would be judged more untrustworthy than facial expressions of happiness. In two separate studies, we measured trustworthiness judgments of four different facial expressions (i.e., neutral, happiness, pain, and disgust), displayed by both computer-generated and real faces, via both explicit self-reported ratings (Study 1) and implicit motor trajectories in a trustworthiness categorization task (Study 2). Ratings and categorization findings partly support our hypotheses. Our results reveal for the first time that when judging strangers' facial expressions, both negative expressions were perceived as more untrustworthy than happy expressions. They also indicate that facial expressions of pain are perceived as untrustworthy as disgust expressions, at least for computer-generated faces. These findings are relevant to the clinical setting because they highlight how overgeneralization of emotional facial expressions may subtend an early perceptual bias exerted by the patient's emotional facial cues onto the clinician's cognitive appraisal process.

Continuous dynamics in behavior reveal interactions between perceptual warping in categorization and speech-in-noise perception.

Introduction: Spoken language comprehension requires listeners map continuous features of the speech signal to discrete category labels. Categories are however malleable to surrounding context and stimulus precedence; listeners' percept can dynamically shift depending on the sequencing of adjacent stimuli resulting in a warping of the heard phonetic category. Here, we investigated whether such perceptual warping-which amplify categorical hearing-might alter speech processing in noise-degraded listening scenarios. Methods: We measured continuous dynamics in perception and category judgments of an acoustic-phonetic vowel gradient via mouse tracking. Tokens were presented in serial vs. random orders to induce more/less perceptual warping while listeners categorized continua in clean and noise conditions. Results: Listeners' responses were faster and their mouse trajectories closer to the ultimate behavioral selection (marked visually on the screen) in serial vs. random order, suggesting increased perceptual attraction to category exemplars. Interestingly, order effects emerged earlier and persisted later in the trial time course when categorizing speech in noise. Discussion: These data describe interactions between perceptual warping in categorization and speech-in-noise perception: warping strengthens the behavioral attraction to relevant speech categories, making listeners more decisive (though not necessarily more accurate) in their decisions of both clean and noise-degraded speech.

The effect of memory load on object reconstruction: Insights from an online mouse-tracking task.

Why can't we remember everything that we experience? Previous work in the domain of object memory has suggested that our ability to resolve interference between relevant and irrelevant object features may limit how much we can remember at any given moment. Here, we developed an online mouse-tracking task to study how memory load influences object reconstruction, testing participants synchronously over virtual conference calls. We first tested up to 18 participants concurrently, replicating memory findings from a condition where participants were tested individually. Next, we examined how memory load influenced mouse trajectories as participants reconstructed target objects. We found interference between the contents of working memory and what was perceived during object reconstruction, an effect that interacted with visual similarity and memory load. Furthermore, we found interference from previously studied but currently irrelevant objects, providing evidence of object-to-location binding errors. At the greatest memory load, participants were nearly three times more likely to move their mouse cursor over previously studied nontarget objects, an effect observed primarily during object reconstruction rather than in the period before the final response. As evidence of the dynamic interplay between working memory and perception, these results show that object reconstruction behavior may be altered by (i) interference between what is represented in mind and what is currently being viewed, and (ii) interference from previously studied but currently irrelevant information. Finally, we discuss how mouse tracking can provide a rich characterization of participant behavior at millisecond temporal resolution, enormously increasing power in cognitive psychology experiments.

Temporal aspects of two types of backward crosstalk in dual-tasks: An analysis of continuous mouse-tracking data.

A common explanation for processing limitations in dual-tasking is the existence of a bottleneck during response selection, meaning that the selection of responses can only occur serially for different tasks. However, a large body of data shows that features of a (secondary) Task 2 can already influence the processing of a (primary) Task 1. Such effects are referred to as backward crosstalk effects (BCEs). In the present study, two types of such BCEs were investigated: the compatibility-based BCE, which depends on the dimensional (often spatial) overlap between task features, and a BCE based on a go/no-go task in Task 2 (no-go BCE). Joining a line of research that suggests different mechanisms for these two types of BCEs, we investigated them using a mouse-tracking setup. Time continuous analyses revealed that the compatibility-based BCE triggered a spatial activation of the Task 2 response early during Task 1 processing, whereas the no-go BCE triggered an inhibitory effect in the case of a no-go Task 2, which spills over to Task 1 execution. This occurred, however, earlier in the time course than expected. The results are discussed with regard to recent models of dual-task processing.