The precision test of metacognitive sensitivity and confidence criteria

Derek H. ARNOLD*, Mitchell CLENDINEN, Alan JOHNSTON, Alan L.F. LEE, Kielan YARROW

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

Abstract

Humans experience feelings of confidence in their decisions. In perception, these feelings are typically accurate – we tend to feel more confident about correct decisions. The degree of insight people have into the accuracy of their decisions is known as metacognitive sensitivity. Currently popular methods of estimating metacognitive sensitivity are subject to interpretive ambiguities because they assume people have normally shaped distributions of different experiences when they are repeatedly exposed to a single input. If this normality assumption is violated, calculations can erroneously underestimate metacognitive sensitivity. Here, we describe a means of estimating metacognitive sensitivity that is more robust to violations of the normality assumption. This improved method can easily be added to standard behavioral experiments, and the authors provide Matlab code to help researchers implement these analyses and experimental procedures.

Original languageEnglish
Article number103728
JournalConsciousness and Cognition
Volume123
Early online date16 Jul 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2024

Bibliographical note

Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Keywords

  • Confidence
  • Perceptual metacognition
  • Signal detection theory

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