Intelligence test solving through eye-movements and mouse-movements

International audienceAmong intelligence tests, Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM) are used to assess reasoning and problem-solving capabilities in adult humans through series of items of increasing difficulty. Each item is defined by a 3x3 matrix of pictograms whose spatial structure follows logical rules. One pictogram is always missing, and the participant must find the correct pictogram among 8 proposed answers. Classically, performance is based on the number of correct responses given by the participant. Yet, research has shown that performance is correlated to the strategies used to solve the items (Carpenter et al., 1990; Vigneau et al., 2006). Two extreme strategies can be defined and measured through eye-tracking: constructivism (inferring the rules from the matrix) vs. elimination (screening the answers for the most probable one).In the present work, we investigated whether the observed impact of visual active sampling on performance was specific to the test design or could be altered by constraining the interactions with the test items. For this purpose, we developed a computerized dynamic version of the RAPM test, with additional mouse interactivity options to select the visible pictograms: 1) full matrix and answers visible at all times (original design), 2) answers hidden and matrix made visible by clicking on it (and reciprocally), 3) a single line of the matrix or all answers visible at once, 4) three user-selected pictograms of the matrix or the answers visible at once. We previously replicated results from the literature by statistically predicting performance from mouse-movements. Nevertheless, the four experimental conditions allow to go further by studying how much of the eye-movement patterns are transferred to mouse-movements (e.g. due to differences in timing and motor cost), and how both types of movements are coordinated and integrated into the overall participant behavioral strategy