Unpacking stereotype influences on source-monitoring processes: What mouse tracking can tell us.

The goal of this study was to understand the cognitive dynamics of stereotype influences on source monitoring employing mouse tracking. By continuously recording cursor movements, we examined how stereotypical knowledge influences decision uncertainty when processing and later remembering stereotype-consistent and - in consistent exemplars of the age categories of "young" and "old". In a source-monitoring task, participants (N = 60) learned age-stereotype consistent or - in consistent statements from two different-aged sources (young vs. old person) that they attributed to their original sources via mouse clicks in a later memory test. Our results showed that individuals experienced cognitive conflict during source attributions depending on both the correctness of the source response and whether the original source was (in)consistent with the stereotype of the respective age group reflected in the statement. This pattern of results was supplemented by the analysis of prototypical mouse-trajectory clusters. Modeling individual source-monitoring processes revealed that individuals' experienced conflict was less pronounced when they remembered the source and was unrelated to guessing resulting from memory failure. These results highlight the benefits of combining cognitive modeling and process-tracing techniques to unpack the mechanisms behind social influences on source monitoring. The methodology of mouse tracking illuminated the role of stereotypes in the underlying cognitive processes during source attributions that is not evident from discrete categorical responses. For designed counter-stereotypical interventions, process-tracing methods may also be used to test their effectiveness on cognitive processes involved in source monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]