The uncertain response in detection-oriented psychophysics.

Watson, Charles S.; Kellogg, Steven C.; Kawanishi, David T.; Lucas, Patrick A.

doi:10.1037/h0034736

Cited by 45 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…; see Atkinson and Juola, 1971; Shiffrin and Schneider, 1977). Indeed, a 100-year history in psychophysics suggests that gate-keeper processes near participants’ perceptual thresholds are higher-level and metacognitive in psychological character (Boring, 1920; Fernberger, 1914; Watson et al, 1973). The gate-keeper also engenders a qualitative change in behavior and cognition (hesitancy, information seeking, uncertainty responses, etc.).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) adaptively monitor uncertainty while multi-tasking

et al. 2009

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As researchers explore animals’ capacity for metacognition and uncertainty monitoring, some paradigms allow the criticism that animal participants—who are always extensively trained in one stimulus domain within which they learn to avoid difficult trials—use task-specific strategies to avoid aversive stimuli instead of responding to a generalized state of uncertainty like that humans might use. We addressed this criticism with an uncertainty-monitoring task environment in which four different task domains were interleaved randomly trial by trial. Four of five macaques (Macaca mulatta) were able to make adaptive uncertainty responses while multi-tasking, suggesting the generality of the psychological signal that occasions these responses. The findings suggest that monkeys may have an uncertainty-monitoring capacity that is like that of humans in transcending task-specific cues and extending simultaneously to multiple domains.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) adaptively monitor uncertainty while multi-tasking

et al. 2009

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“…The rules of stimulus control are different there, animals have difficulty finding adaptive solutions there, animals become minimally informed observers there, and there are not stimuli there on which to ground operants or conditioned reflexes (Boneau & Cole, 1967;Commons et al, 1991;Davison et al, 1985;Miller et al, 1980;Terman & Terman, 1972). The classical psychophysicists agreed that the threshold state is psychologically complex (Boring, 1920;Fernberger, 1914;George, 1917;Thomson, 1920;Watson et al, 1973;Woodworth, 1938). A threshold event is not the clear stimulus signal that can ground a reflexive response.…”

Section: Controlled Decisional Processes In Uncertainty-monitoring Tmentioning

confidence: 94%

Animal Metacognition: Problems and Prospects

Smith¹,

Beran²,

Couchman³

et al. 2009

CCBR

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Researchers have begun to evaluate whether nonhuman animals share humans' capacity for metacognitive monitoring and self-regulation. Using perception, memory, numerical, and foraging paradigms, they have tested apes, capuchins, a dolphin, macaques, pigeons, and rats. However, recent theoretical and formal-modeling work has confirmed that some paradigms allow the criticism that low-level associative mechanisms could create the appearance of uncertainty monitoring in animals. This possibility has become a central issue as researchers reflect on existing phenomena and pause to evaluate the area's current status. The present authors discuss the associative question and offer our evaluation of the field. Associative mechanisms explain poorly some of the area's important results. The next phase of research in this area should consolidate the gains achieved by those results and work toward a theoretical understanding of the cognitive and decisional (not associative) capacities that animals show in some of the referent experiments.Humans feel uncertain. They know when they do not know or remember, and they respond well to uncertainty by deferring response and seeking help or information. Their responses to doubt and uncertainty ground research on metacognition, or thinking about thinking (Benjamin et al.

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“…Interestingly, the scientific study of this paradigm originated in experimental psychology along with quantitative studies of perception [22 -25]; however, these early attempts were found to be too subjective [23,24,26] and were soon abandoned in favour of 'forced choice' tasks to quantify percepts based on binary choices. After nearly a century of neglect, a series of studies by Smith and co-workers [5] reinvigorated the field of confidence judgements using these paradigms in both human and non-human subjects with the goal of placing the notion of subjective confidence on a scientific footing.…”

Section: Behavioural Reports Of Confidence In Humans and Other Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A computational framework for the study of confidence in humans and animals

Kepecs

Mainen

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

273

289

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Confidence judgements, self-assessments about the quality of a subject's knowledge, are considered a central example of metacognition. Prima facie, introspection and self-report appear the only way to access the subjective sense of confidence or uncertainty. Contrary to this notion, overt behavioural measures can be used to study confidence judgements by animals trained in decision-making tasks with perceptual or mnemonic uncertainty. Here, we suggest that a computational approach can clarify the issues involved in interpreting these tasks and provide a much needed springboard for advancing the scientific understanding of confidence. We first review relevant theories of probabilistic inference and decision-making. We then critically discuss behavioural tasks employed to measure confidence in animals and show how quantitative models can help to constrain the computational strategies underlying confidence-reporting behaviours. In our view, post-decision wagering tasks with continuous measures of confidence appear to offer the best available metrics of confidence. Since behavioural reports alone provide a limited window into mechanism, we argue that progress calls for measuring the neural representations and identifying the computations underlying confidence reports. We present a case study using such a computational approach to study the neural correlates of decision confidence in rats. This work shows that confidence assessments may be considered higher order, but can be generated using elementary neural computations that are available to a wide range of species. Finally, we discuss the relationship of confidence judgements to the wider behavioural uses of confidence and uncertainty.

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The uncertain response in detection-oriented psychophysics.

Cited by 45 publications

References 7 publications

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) adaptively monitor uncertainty while multi-tasking

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) adaptively monitor uncertainty while multi-tasking

Animal Metacognition: Problems and Prospects

A computational framework for the study of confidence in humans and animals

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