scholarly journals Minding One's Reach (To Eat): The Promise of Computer Mouse-Tracking to Study Self-Regulation of Eating

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Lopez ◽  
Paul E. Stillman ◽  
Todd F. Heatherton ◽  
Jonathan B. Freeman
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Roche ◽  
Arkady Zgonnikov ◽  
Laura M. Morett

Purpose The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the social and cognitive underpinnings of miscommunication during an interactive listening task. Method An eye and computer mouse–tracking visual-world paradigm was used to investigate how a listener's cognitive effort (local and global) and decision-making processes were affected by a speaker's use of ambiguity that led to a miscommunication. Results Experiments 1 and 2 found that an environmental cue that made a miscommunication more or less salient impacted listener language processing effort (eye-tracking). Experiment 2 also indicated that listeners may develop different processing heuristics dependent upon the speaker's use of ambiguity that led to a miscommunication, exerting a significant impact on cognition and decision making. We also found that perspective-taking effort and decision-making complexity metrics (computer mouse tracking) predict language processing effort, indicating that instances of miscommunication produced cognitive consequences of indecision, thinking, and cognitive pull. Conclusion Together, these results indicate that listeners behave both reciprocally and adaptively when miscommunications occur, but the way they respond is largely dependent upon the type of ambiguity and how often it is produced by the speaker.


2019 ◽  
Vol 81 (7) ◽  
pp. 2424-2460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Lins ◽  
Gregor Schöner

Abstract In a novel computer mouse tracking paradigm, participants read a spatial phrase such as “The blue item to the left of the red one” and then see a scene composed of 12 visual items. The task is to move the mouse cursor to the target item (here, blue), which requires perceptually grounding the spatial phrase. This entails visually identifying the reference item (here, red) and other relevant items through attentional selection. Response trajectories are attracted toward distractors that share the target color but match the spatial relation less well. Trajectories are also attracted toward items that share the reference color. A competing pair of items that match the specified colors but are in the inverse spatial relation increases attraction over-additively compared to individual items. Trajectories are also influenced by the spatial term itself. While the distractor effect resembles deviation toward potential targets in previous studies, the reference effect suggests that the relevance of the reference item for the relational task, not its role as a potential target, was critical. This account is supported by the strengthened effect of a competing pair. We conclude, therefore, that the attraction effects in the mouse trajectories reflect the neural processes that operate on sensorimotor representations to solve the relational task. The paradigm thus provides an experimental window through motor behavior into higher cognitive function and the evolution of activation in modal substrates, a longstanding topic in the area of embodied cognition.


Author(s):  
Paul Freihaut ◽  
Anja S. Göritz ◽  
Christoph Rockstroh ◽  
Johannes Blum

AbstractComputer mouse tracking offers a simple and cost-efficient way to gather continuous behavioral data and has mostly been utilized in psychological science to study cognitive processes. The present study extends the potential applicability of computer mouse tracking and investigates the feasibility of using computer mouse tracking for stress measurement. Drawing on first empirical results and theoretical considerations, we hypothesized that stress affects sensorimotor processes involved in mouse usage. To explore the relationship between stress and computer mouse usage, we conducted a between-participant field experiment in which N = 994 participants worked on four mouse tasks in a high-stress or low-stress condition. In the manipulation check, participants reported different stress levels between the two conditions. However, frequentist and machine learning data analysis approaches did not reveal a clear and systematic relationship between mouse usage and stress. These findings challenge the feasibility of using straightforward computer mouse tracking for generalized stress measurement.


2013 ◽  
Vol 221 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Starla M. Weaver ◽  
Catherine M. Arrington

Task switching paradigms examining executive control in multitask environments typically measure reaction time and accuracy from key press responses. The discrete nature of such responses may limit the ability to capture the dynamics of cognitive control processes that unfold over time in complex environments. The current study used computer mouse tracking methodology to measure the processes that occur during task switching. In two experiments mouse trajectory data were collected as participants used onscreen category labels to respond to two simple tasks. The application of mouse tracking methodology to cued task switching provided both a replication of previous findings using key press responses and a more sensitive measure of the cognitive processes and activated representations underlying those effects. Computer mouse tracking offers a novel methodology for uncovering the mental representations and processes unfolding during multitasking.


2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (6) ◽  
pp. 3405-3413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas C. Hindy ◽  
Roy Hamilton ◽  
Andrea S. Houghtling ◽  
H. Branch Coslett ◽  
Sharon L. Thompson-Schill

Converging evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies is essential for understanding human frontal cortical function. We introduce a new method for studying the effects of transient disruptions of frontal activity during transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Using a novel combination of TMS and computer-mouse tracking, through two experiments we tested process models of semantic competition in left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC). On TMS stimulation of left mid-VLPFC just after presentation of an ambiguous stimulus, participants' mouse-movement trajectories deviated more toward the incorrect target for weak associate trials than for any other trial type. This effect was extinguished when participants were simultaneously shown both target and cue stimuli. Results suggest that left mid-VLPFC is necessary to resolve semantic competition when a response is underdetermined by the stimulus and the interpretive context of the stimulus is ambiguous. Computer-mouse movements reveal the dynamics of competitive interactions as they resolve, making this technique ideally suited for studying cognitive control processes and a more sensitive index of TMS disruption than reaction time and accuracy alone.


Author(s):  
Виталий Людвиченко ◽  
Vitaliy Lyudvichenko ◽  
Дмитрий Ватолин ◽  
Dmitriy Vatolin

This paper presents a new way of getting high-quality saliency maps for video, using a cheaper alternative to eye-tracking data. We designed a mouse-contingent video viewing system which simulates the viewers’ peripheral vision based on the position of the mouse cursor. The system enables the use of mouse-tracking data recorded from an ordinary computer mouse as an alternative to real gaze fixations recorded by a more expensive eye-tracker. We developed a crowdsourcing system that enables the collection of such mouse-tracking data at large scale. Using the collected mouse-tracking data we showed that it can serve as an approximation of eye-tracking data. Moreover, trying to increase the efficiency of collected mouse-tracking data we proposed a novel deep neural network algorithm that improves the quality of mouse-tracking saliency maps.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (50) ◽  
pp. 31738-31747
Author(s):  
Paul E. Stillman ◽  
Ian Krajbich ◽  
Melissa J. Ferguson

Navigating conflict is integral to decision-making, serving a central role both in the subjective experience of choice as well as contemporary theories of how we choose. However, the lack of a sensitive, accessible, and interpretable metric of conflict has led researchers to focus on choice itself rather than how individuals arrive at that choice. Using mouse-tracking—continuously sampling computer mouse location as participants decide—we demonstrate the theoretical and practical uses of dynamic assessments of choice from decision onset through conclusion. Specifically, we use mouse tracking to index conflict, quantified by the relative directness to the chosen option, in a domain for which conflict is integral: decisions involving risk. In deciding whether to accept risk, decision makers must integrate gains, losses, status quos, and outcome probabilities, a process that inevitably involves conflict. Across three preregistered studies, we tracked participants’ motor movements while they decided whether to accept or reject gambles. Our results show that 1) mouse-tracking metrics of conflict sensitively detect differences in the subjective value of risky versus certain options; 2) these metrics of conflict strongly predict participants’ risk preferences (loss aversion and decreasing marginal utility), even on a single-trial level; 3) these mouse-tracking metrics outperform participants’ reaction times in predicting risk preferences; and 4) manipulating risk preferences via a broad versus narrow bracketing manipulation influences conflict as indexed by mouse tracking. Together, these results highlight the importance of measuring conflict during risky choice and demonstrate the usefulness of mouse tracking as a tool to do so.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 610-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARA INCERA ◽  
CONOR T. McLENNAN

We used mouse tracking to compare the performance of bilinguals and monolinguals in a Stroop task. Participants were instructed to respond to the color of the words (e.g., blue in yellow font) by clicking on response options on the screen. We recorded participants’ movements of a computer mouse: when participants started moving (initiation times), and how fast they moved towards the correct response (x-coordinates over time). Interestingly, initiation times were longer for bilinguals than monolinguals. Nevertheless, when comparing mouse trajectories, bilinguals moved faster towards the correct response. Taken together, these results indicate that bilinguals behave qualitatively differently from monolinguals; bilinguals are “experts” at managing conflicting information. Experts across many different domains take longer to initiate a response, but then they outperform novices. These qualitative differences in performance could be at the root of apparently contradictory findings in the bilingual literature.


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