Discerning Mouse Trajectory Features With the Drift Diffusion Model

Pause before action: Waiting short time as a simple and resource-rational boost

Many workers today engage in straightforward judgment tasks, increasing the need for interventions to improve accuracy. We propose a resource-rational and psychohygienic intervention, "wait short time", which introduces a brief pause before displaying alternatives. This pause works as a harmonious triad: it clears the mind of prior judgment bias, restores present attention, and prepares the mind for future judgments; and all this without additional instructions. Based on a resource rationality framework, cognitive costs (e.g., irritation, cognitive conflict) are associated with prolonged thinking because of humans limited cognitive resources. Therefore, there should be an appropriately short thinking time to achieve higher accuracy with minimal workload. We investigated the effectiveness of the proposed intervention both theoretically and empirically. The computer simulations demonstrated that, under assumptions of limited cognitive resources, there was an optimal time at the early stages for maximizing total benefits. The results of behavioral experiment was consistent with the theoretical findings: Providing a waiting time (1 s or 2.5 s) improved judgment accuracy, but cognitive conflicts increased over time and an unnecessarily long time (2.5 s) induced more subjective irritation. Consequently, an appropriate time (1 s) could enhance judgment accuracy with less workload. We discuss the implications and limitations of the proposed intervention.

Context modulates evidence accumulation in split-second handball penalty decisions

Due to severe time constraints, goalkeepers regularly face the challenging task to make decisions within just a few hundred milliseconds. A key finding of anticipation research is that experts outperform novices by using advanced cues which can be derived from either kinematic or contextual information. Yet, how context modulates decision-making in split-second decisions remains to be determined. Here, we aimed at examining the influence of contextual information on real-time evidence accumulation in split-second decision-making using handball penalty decisions. In Exp. 1 we validated the applicability of hierarchical drift-diffusion modeling (HDDM) for the chosen split-second handball penalty scenario. Following validation, Exp. 2 directly addressed the main aim, namely, to examine how contextual information affects the HDDM parameters drift rate, as the rate of evidence accumulation, and non-decision time, which encompasses perceptual and motor processes. Participants predicted shot direction in temporally occluded videos of handball penalties, with probability (i.e., contextual) information regarding the shot direction being manipulated in half of the trials. Results showed that contextual information systematically affected the drift rate, indicating faster evidence accumulation when context information predicts the subsequent action. Vice versa, incongruent context information resulted in slower evidence accumulation. By contrast, non-decision time was only affected by the mere presence of contextual information (i.e., longer with context information). Our study is the first to show that contextual information modulates evidence accumulation on extremely short timescales in highly time-constrained penalty decisions.

The trajectory of crime: Integrating mouse-tracking into concealed memory detection

The autobiographical implicit association test (aIAT) is an approach of memory detection that can be used to identify true autobiographical memories. This study incorporates mouse-tracking (MT) into aIAT, which offers a more robust technique of memory detection. Participants were assigned to mock crime and then performed the aIAT with MT. Results showed that mouse metrics exhibited IAT effects that correlated with the IAT effect of RT and showed differences in autobiographical and irrelevant events while RT did not. Our findings suggest the validity of MT in offering measurement of the IAT effect. We also observed different patterns in mouse trajectories and velocity for autobiographical and irrelevant events. Lastly, utilizing MT metric, we identified that the Past Negative Score was positively correlated with IAT effect. Integrating the Past Negative Score and AUC into computational models improved the simulation results. Our model captured the ubiquitous implicit association between autobiographical events and the attribute True, and offered a mechanistic account for implicit bias. Across the traditional IAT and the MT results, we provide evidence that MT-aIAT can better capture the memory identification and with implications in crime detection.

Unravelling the dynamics of response force: Investigating motor restraint and motor cancellation through go/no-go and stop-signal tasks

Prior research has found that the go/no-go (GNG) task primarily reflects participants' motor-restraint process, while the stop-signal task (SST) primarily represents participants' motor-cancellation process. However, traditional binary keyboards used in these experiments are unable to capture the subtleties of sub-threshold response-force dynamics. This has led to the neglect of potential sub-threshold motor-inhibition processes. In two experiments, we explored sub-threshold inhibition by using a custom force-sensitive keyboard to record response force in both GNG and SST. In experiment 1, participants displayed increased response force when correctly rejecting no-go targets in the GNG task compared to the baseline. In addition, they exhibited higher response force in hit trials than in false alarms, revealing engagement of both motor-restraint and motor-cancellation processes in GNG. Initially, participants utilised motor restraint, but if it failed to prevent inappropriate responses, they employed motor cancellation to stop responses before reaching the keypress threshold. In experiment 2, we used participants' average response-force amplitude and response-force latency in SST stop trials to characterise the motor-cancellation process. Average amplitude significantly predicted false-alarm rates in the GNG task, but the relationship between response latency and false-alarm rates was insignificant. We hypothesised that response latency reflects reactive inhibition control in motor cancellation, whereas average amplitude indicates proactive inhibition control. Our findings underscore the complexity of motor inhibition.

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.