Understanding how people rate their confidence is critical for characterizing a wide range of perceptual, memory, motor, and cognitive processes. To enable the continued exploration of these processes, we created a large database of confidence studies spanning a broad set of paradigms, participant populations, and fields of study. The data from each study are structured in a common,

This study evaluated the aspects of complex decisions influenced by peers, and components of peer involvement influential to adolescents' risky decisions. Participants (N = 140) aged 13-25 completed the Columbia Card Task (CCT), a risky choice task, isolating deliberation-reliant and affect-reliant decisions while alone, while a friend monitors choices, and while a friend is merely present. There is no condition in which a nonfriend peer is present. Results demonstrated the risk-increasing peer effect occurred in the youngest participants in the cold CCT and middle-late adolescents in the hot CCT, whereas other ages and contexts showed a risk-decreasing peer effect. Mere presence was not sufficient to influence risky behavior. These boundaries in age, decision, and peer involvement constrain prevailing models of adolescent peer influence.

It is widely believed that feedback improves behavior, but the mechanisms behind this improvement remain unclear. Different theories postulate that feedback has either a direct effect on performance through automatic reinforcement mechanisms or only an indirect effect mediated by a deliberate change in strategy. To adjudicate between these competing accounts, we performed two large experiments on human adults (total N = 518); approximately half the participants received trial-by-trial feedback on a perceptual task, whereas the other half did not receive any feedback. We found that feedback had no effect on either perceptual or metacognitive sensitivity even after 7 days of training. On the other hand, feedback significantly affected participants’ response strategies by reducing response bias and improving confidence calibration. These results suggest that the beneficial effects of feedback stem from allowing people to adjust their strategies for performing the task and not from direct reinforcement mechanisms, at least in the domain of perception.

It is widely believed that feedback improves behavior but the mechanisms behind this improvement remain unclear. Different theories postulate that feedback has either a direct effect on performance through automatic reinforcement mechanisms or only an indirect effect mediated by a deliberate change in strategy. To adjudicate between these two competing accounts, we performed a large-scale study including 443 subjects; approximately half of them received trial-by-trial feedback on a perceptual task, while the other half did not receive such feedback. We found that feedback had no effect on either perceptual or metacognitive sensitivity. On the other hand, feedback significantly affected subjects’ response strategies by reducing bias and improving calibration in both the perceptual and metacognitive judgments. These results strongly support the view that feedback does not improve behavior through direct reinforcement mechanisms but that its beneficial effects stem from allowing people to adjust their strategies for performing the task.

When we view emotionally arousing images, our perception of stimuli that follow soon afterward is transiently impaired—a phenomenon known as emotion-induced blindness. Previous studies have demonstrated that the magnitude and time course of this visual processing impairment is exaggerated by the presence of psychopathology and anxiety-related traits. Here, we tested whether emotional interference on a primary task can be modulated on a more dynamic basis, by the anticipation of unpredictable electric shock. We embedded naturalistic scenes in a 10-Hz rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream, while varying the hedonic content of distractor images (aversive or neutral) and their temporal position (200, 400, and 700 ms) with respect to landscape targets. In Experiment 1, we found that, under typical conditions, aversive distractors induced a temporary visual performance decrement that exhibited a full rebound following a 400-ms distractor-target lag. In Experiment 2, subjects performed an identical RSVP task while under continuous threat of electric shock. We found that threat of unpredictable electric shock prolonged the duration of the emotional interference out to 400 ms and 700 ms, without affecting the overall magnitude of the performance impairment. In Experiment 3, the prolonged emotional interference under threat of unpredictable electric shock persisted at the 400-ms lag despite observed practice effects within subjects.