Applying the decision moving window to risky choice: Comparison of eye-tracking and mousetracing methods

Abstract

Currently, a disparity exists between the process-level models decision researchers use to describe and predict decision behavior and the methods implemented and metrics collected to test these models. The current work seeks to remedy this disparity by combining the advantages of work in decision research (mouse-tracing paradigms with contingent information display) and cognitive psychology (eye-tracking paradigms from reading and scene perception). In particular, we introduce a new decision moving-window paradigm that presents stimulus information contingent on eye fixations. We provide data from the first application of this method to risky decision making, and show how it compares to basic eye-tracking and mouse-tracing methods. We also enumerate the practical, theoretical, and analytic advantages this method offers above and beyond both mouse-tracing with occlusion and basic eye tracking of information without occlusion. We include the use of new metrics that offer more precision than those typically calculated on mouse-tracing data as well as those not possible or feasible within the mouse-tracing paradigm.

Keywords

• decision making
• eye tracking
• process tracing
• metrics.NAKeywords