Cognitive processes underlying an adaptive toolbox: Investigations by a mouse tracking

Abstract

People adaptively use various judgmental strategies based on situations and make accurate judgments. This framework is called an adaptive toolbox. In this study, using mouse tracking approaches, we investigated differences in judgmental processes between heuristic users and knowledge users in a binary choice task. We first estimated judgmental strategy that each participant might use through model-based approaches. As a result, heuristic was often used in difficult questions. We next investigated each participant’s cursor trajectories during choice behaviors. We found that both heuristic users and knowledge users quickly moved a mouse from the beginning of tasks, but heuristic users tended to amend their judgments right before the final choice. It is expected that our findings will extend the adaptive toolbox framework in terms of judgmental processes under which people use their strategies.