Selection of Procedures in Mental Division: Relations Between Self-Reports and Eye-Movement Patterns

Do eye-movement patterns reflect the procedures people use when solving basic arithmetic problems? Sixty-eight adults solved simple division problems while their eye movements were recorded. Thirty-four of these participants reported their solution processes (Experiment 1A: Self-Report Condition) and 34 participants did not (Experiment 1B: Combined Analyses). Participants in Experiment 1A were classified into procedure groups based on their reported use of procedures for large division problems: Retrievers, transformers, and counters. Transformers and counters fixated more on the left and right operands than retrievers for large problems. The 34 participants in Experiment 1B were categorized based on their values of mu and tau for large problems. Patterns of performance for these participants, combined with those who provided self-reports, complemented the patterns found in Experiment 1A. The above results lend support to the use of eye tracking to augment traditional measures of performance when assessing individual differences in procedure selection.