Eye movements reveal that low confidence precedes deliberation

Abstract

Contemporary dual process models of reasoning maintain that there are two types of thinking – intuitive and deliberative – and that low confidence predicts the engagement of deliberation. Previous studies examining the confidence-deliberation relationship have been limited by 1) issues of endogeneity and between-subject comparisons – concerns that we address by employing debias training; and 2) measures of confidence that are taken relatively late in the reasoning process – a concern that we address by employing a real-time eye-tracking measure of confidence. Self-reported and eye-tracked confidence were negatively related to deliberative thinking, providing novel evidence for the time-course of the confidence-deliberation relationship, and revealing that lowered confidence precedes deliberation.

Eye Movements, Pupil Dilation, and Conflict Detection in Reasoning: Exploring the Evidence for Intuitive Logic

“…That is, even when participants’ behavioral responses were in error, they showed intuitive sensitivity to the logical information. Moreover, recent studies reveal that eye movements are negatively related to judgments of confidence (Purcell et al., 2022) and positively related to the engagement of effortful thinking (Purcell, Wastell, & Sweller, 2022). The growing evidence suggesting that metacognitions and conflict have systematic impacts on eye movements is promising for the use of gaze‐based indicators in determining the intuitive impacts of belief–logic conflict.…”