Dual-processing accounts of reasoning havegained renewed attention in the past decade,particularly in the fields of social judgment,learning, and decision-making under uncertainty.Although the various accounts differ, thecommon thread is the distinction between twoqualitatively different types of reasoning:explicit/implicit, rational/affective, fast/slow, etc.Consequently, much research has focused oncharacterizing the two different processes. Lessextensive are the attempts to find mediators thatinfluence which process is used. In this paper, weargue that the missing perspective on these dual-processing theories is rooted in dynamicalsystems theory. By shifting the perspective to thedynamic interaction and transitions betweendifferent types of reasoning, we provide atheoretical framework for dual-processing withan emphasis on phase transitions. As a specialcase, we focus on dual-processing in decision-making and judgment under uncertainty forwhich we will propose suggestions for futureexperimental evaluation.

Sensory information is a priori incomplete andambiguous. Our perceptual system has to makepredictions about the sources of the sensoryinformation, based on concepts from perceptualmemory in order to create stable and reliablepercepts. We presented ambiguous anddisambiguated lattice stimuli (variants of the Neckercube) in order to measure a hysteresis effects invisual perception. Fifteen healthy participantsobserved two periods of ordered sequences oflattices with increasing and decreasing ambiguityand indicated their percepts, in two experimentalconditions with different starting stimuli of theordered sequence. We compared the stimulusparameters at the perceptual reversal betweenconditions and periods and found significantdifferences between conditions and periods,indicating memory contributions to perceptualoutcomes on three different time scales frommilliseconds over seconds up to lifetime memory.Our results demonstrate the fruitful application ofphysical concepts like hysteresis andcomplementarity to visual perception.