Distinct neural contributions to metacognition for detecting, but not discriminating visual stimuli

Abstract

Being confident in whether a stimulus is present or absent (a detection judgment) is qualitatively distinct from being confident in the identity of that stimulus (a discrimination judgment). In particular, in detection, evidence can only be available for the presence, not the absence, of a target object. This asymmetry suggests that higher-order cognitive and neural processes may be required for confidence in detection, and more specifically, in judgments about absence. In a within-subject, pre-registered and performance-matched fMRI design, we observed quadratic confidence effects in frontopolar cortex for detection but not discrimination. Furthermore, in the right temporoparietal junction, confidence effects were enhanced for judgments of target absence compared to judgments of target presence. We interpret these findings as reflecting qualitative differences between a neural basis for metacognitive evaluation of detection and discrimination, potentially in line with counterfactual or higher-order models of confidence formation in detection.

Distinguishing absence of awareness from awareness of absence

“…For example, trials in which participants report extremely low or high visibility ratings may be similar in that in both cases participants believe they were attentive and expected high fidelity sensory signals (high precision, in the parlance of predictive coding models) as a result. Indeed, when given the option to report stimulus presence and absence independently from subjective confidence, modulation of prefrontal activation by confidence was highly similar for 'yes' and 'no' responses in a perceptual detection task (Mazor et al, 2020). A role for the prefrontal cortex in higher-order monitoring of internal states is also consistent with relative increases in prefrontal activation in paradigms that require explicit report, compared to no-report paradigms (Frassle et al, 2014).…”

“…We are not familiar with previous studies that have explicitly incorporated such a two-dimensional awareness report scheme. However, a related approach is to elicit visual detection judgments in conjunction with subjective confidence ratings (Kanai et al, 2010;Kellij et al, 2020;Mazor et al, 2020;Meuwese et al, 2014). Such a design allows subjects to report both high or low confidence in stimulus presence, and also high or low confidence in stimulus absence.…”

“…We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this important distinction Mazor, M., & Fleming, S. M. (2020)…”

“…Note that in AST, the critical content-invariant aspect of awareness A is not attention, but higherorder beliefs about one's own attentional state. Therefore, both A and X represent specific contents, but X corresponds to the content of consciousness, and A to meta-level content about one's own state that is itself not necessarily accessible to consciousness Mazor, M., & Fleming, S. M. (2020)…”

Illusions of control without delusions of grandeur

“…where observers can in principle process both positive and negative evidence for a particular outcome, and more like detection tasks (e.g., was there a line or not?). Intriguingly, observers in perceptual tasks tend to have poorer insight into their ability to judge absence over presence (Kanai et al, 2010;Meuwese et al, 2014), possibly because the former places particular demands on metacognitive self-monitoring mechanisms (Mazor et al, 2020). This asymmetry may have important implications for how agents actively monitor what they cannot control in certain kinds of environments (Wen et al, 2020).…”