But I Was So Sure! Metacognitive Judgments Are Less Accurate Given Prospectively than Retrospectively

Abstract

Prospective and retrospective metacognitive judgments have been studied extensively in the field of memory; however, their accuracy has not been systematically compared. Such a comparison is important for studying how metacognitive judgments are formed. Here, we present the results of an experiment aiming to investigate the relation between performance in an anagram task and the accuracy of prospective and retrospective confidence judgments. Participants worked on anagrams and were then asked to respond whether a presented word was the solution. They also rated their confidence, either before or after the response and either before or after seeing the suggested solution. The results showed that although response accuracy always correlated with confidence, this relationship was weaker when metacognitive judgements were given before the response. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of this finding for studies on metacognition and consciousness.

Action information contributes to metacognitive decision-making

“…Concurrent EEG recordings showed that functional connectivity between prefrontal regions and motor areas increased after a first-order response, specifically when a metacognitive judgment was required. Together with previous findings (Fleming et al 2015;Siedlecka et al 2016;Fleming 2016;Wokke et al 2017), our results demonstrate that post-decisional action information contributes to metacognitive decision-making, thereby painting a picture of metacognition as a second-order process employing endogenous control mechanisms. Verbal confidence ratings were recorded either at the end of each trial (ACT), or directly preceding the first-order response (PRE_ACT), or directly following stimulus presentation (PRE_CUE).…”

“…Critically, stimulation of premotor areas reduced metacognitive capacity without changing visual discrimination performance. Further, it has been shown that the order of rating confidence (before or after the response) influenced metacognitive performance on an anagram problem-solving task (Siedlecka et al 2016). From a computational perspective, Pasquali and colleagues explored neural network architectures aimed at capturing the complex relationships between first-order and second-order (metacognitive) performance in a range of different cognitive tasks and suggested that metacognitive judgments are rooted in learned redescriptions of firstorder error information rather than in the relevant first-order information itself (Pasquali et al 2010).…”

Self-evaluation of decision-making: A general Bayesian framework for metacognitive computation.

“…In Figure 6D we replot their data alongside the second-order model simulation at constant stimulus strength (Figure 6E). Siedlecka et al (2016) found that metacognitive sensitivity was greater in the tDM than the tMD conditions, in accordance with the predictions of a second-order model in which actions inform confidence ratings. In addition, confidence was overall lower in the choose-rate case, although unlike the effect on metacognitive sensitivity, this was not statistically significant.…”

“…While revising our manuscript for publication (and after developing these simulations) we became aware of a published dataset that directly tested and confirmed our predictions (Figure 6D). Siedlecka et al (2016) asked subjects to provide confidence ratings about whether a target word presented on the screen was the solution to a previously studied anagram. In a between-subjects design, participants were assigned to one of three conditions: deciding if a target word was an anagram and then judging confidence (target-decision-metacognitive judgment, tDM); judging confidence after seeing the target but before making a decision (tMD); or rating confidence before seeing the target word (MtD).…”

Distinct neural mechanisms underlie the success, precision, and vividness of episodic memory

“…In previous work, vividness ratings were often recorded after the mnemonic decision, meaning that judgments could reflect the participants’ perception of how they had performed on that trial; moreover, vividness and precision or retrieval success effects were not distinguished, such that vividness is likely to have been confounded with precision and/or retrieval success. In the current study, making the vividness rating before any decision on the objects ensured that it reflected participants’ assessment of their subjective ability to bring to mind the appearance of the objects on the display, rather than the influences of perceived difficulty or post-decision processing (Siedlecka et al, 2016). Second, we modeled vividness, retrieval success and precision within the same general linear model, meaning that they accounted for independent sources of variance.…”