Gamble on gaze: Eye movements reflect the numerical value of blackjack hands.

Abstract

We used a novel task-a blackjack game that naturally involves mental summation of numerical values-to investigate the role of attention in the mental number line (MNL) and to provide insight into the ecological validity of this representational format. By analyzing the spatial position of participants' spontaneous, task-irrelevant eye movements, we avoided some of the limitations of previous research on the MNL, in which the findings could be attributed to task-specific factors such as the use of overt spatial cues. In two experiments, we found that eye movements along the horizontal axis reflected the overall numerical value of participants' hands, with smaller-value hands eliciting fixations toward the left of the screen and larger-value hands eliciting fixations toward the right. This pattern held even when controlling for the number of cards in the hand and the value of the card most recently dealt-suggesting that the effects were driven by mental summation of values, not merely by the processing of serial order or individual numbers. Vertical eye movements, in contrast, reflected hand value less reliably. In showing that spontaneous eye movements along the horizontal axis track the magnitude of internally computed sums in an ecologically relevant task, our findings provide evidence for a dynamic MNL that supports magnitude-driven shifts of attention and that may be recruited during everyday forms of numerical reasoning.