No-loss gambling shows the speed of the unconscious

This paper investigates the time it takes unconscious vs. conscious knowledge to form by using an improved "no-loss gambling" method to measure awareness of knowing. Subjects could either bet on a transparently random process or on their grammaticality judgment in an artificial grammar learning task. A conflict in the literature is resolved concerning whether unconscious rather than conscious knowledge is especially fast or slow to form. When guessing (betting on a random process), accuracy was above chance and RTs were longer than when feeling confident (betting on the grammaticality decision). In a second experiment, short response deadlines only interfered with the quality of confident decisions (betting on grammaticality). When people are unaware of their knowledge, externally enforced decisions can be made rapidly with little decline in quality; but if given ample time, they await a metacognitive process to complete. The dissociation validates no-loss gambling as a measure of conscious awareness.     

Relating inter-individual differences in metacognitive performance on different perceptual tasks

Human behavior depends on the ability to effectively introspect about our performance. For simple perceptual decisions, this introspective or metacognitive ability varies substantially across individuals and is correlated with the structure of focal areas in prefrontal cortex. This raises the possibility that the ability to introspect about different perceptual decisions might be mediated by a common cognitive process. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether inter-individual differences in metacognitive ability were correlated across two different perceptual tasks where individuals made judgments about different and unrelated visual stimulus properties. We found that inter-individual differences were strongly correlated between the two tasks for metacognitive ability but not objective performance. Such stability of an individual’s metacognitive ability across different perceptual tasks indicates a general mechanism supporting metacognition independent of the specific task.     

Domain-specific and domain-general processes underlying metacognitive judgments

Metacognition and self-awareness are commonly assumed to operate as global capacities. However, there have been few attempts to test this assumption across multiple cognitive domains and metacognitive evaluations. Here, we assessed the covariance between “online” metacognitive processes, as measured by decision confidence judgments in the domains of perception and memory, and error awareness in the domain of attention to action. Previous research investigating metacognition across task domains have not matched stimulus characteristics across tasks raising the possibility that any differences in metacognitive accuracy may be influenced by local task properties. The current experiment measured metacognition in perceptual, memorial and attention tasks that were closely matched for stimulus characteristics. We found that metacognitive accuracy across the three tasks was dissociated suggesting that domain specific networks support an individual’s capacity for accurate metacognition. This finding was independent of objective performance, which was controlled using a staircase procedure. However, response times for metacognitive judgments and error awareness were associated suggesting that shared mechanisms determining how these meta-level evaluations unfold in time may underlie these different types of decision. In addition, the relationship between these laboratory measures of metacognition and reports of everyday functioning from participants and their significant others (informants) was investigated. We found that informant reports, but not self reports, predicted metacognitive accuracy on the perceptual task and participants who underreported cognitive difficulties relative to their informants also showed poorer metacognitive accuracy on the perceptual task. These results are discussed in the context of models of metacognitive regulation and neuropsychological evidence for dissociable metacognitive systems. The potential for the refinement of metacognitive assessment in clinical populations is also discussed.     

重量对元认知监控的无意识影响

采用结构知识归因的方法,以学习判断和项目优先选择作为元认知监测和控制的指标,考察重量对元认知监控的影响是否是无意识的。被试学习粘贴在不同重量纸盒上的词对,进行学习判断(实验1)或项目选择(实验2),并报告其判断或选择的依据。结果:(1)重量影响学习判断和项目优先选择,相对于轻纸盒,被试给予重纸盒上的词对更高的JOL并优先选择重纸盒上的词对进行学习;(2)重量对学习判断的影响只发生在判断依据为猜测的情况下,重量对项目优先选择的影响只发生在判断依据为猜测和直觉的情况下。上述结果支持了元认知的具身性,并提示重量对元认知监控的影响可能是无意识的。     

Confidence in masked orientation judgments is informed by both evidence and visibility

How do human observers determine their degree of belief that they are correct in a decision about a visual stimulus—that is, their confidence? According to prominent theories of confidence, the quality of stimulation should be positively related to confidence in correct decisions, and negatively to confidence in incorrect decisions. However, in a backward-masked orientation task with a varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), we observed that confidence in incorrect decisions also increased with stimulus quality. Model fitting to our decision and confidence data revealed that the best explanation for the present data was the new weighted evidence-and-visibility model, according to which confidence is determined by evidence about the orientation as well as by the general visibility of the stimulus. Signal detection models, postdecisional accumulation models, two-channel models, and decision-time-based models were all unable to explain the pattern of confidence as a function of SOA and decision correctness. We suggest that the metacognitive system combines several cues related to the correctness of a decision about a visual stimulus in order to calculate decision confidence.     

When do people bet on their selves? The role of global self-concepts in decision making

Previous research suggests that behavior is generally predicted by specific self-concepts but not global self-concepts. A study was conducted to examine the conditions under which global conceptions of self are predictive of decision-making. Participants were given the opportunity to bet lottery tickets on their performance in the “Utah Challenge” competition. Both global and specific self-concepts independently predicted betting on specific known contests and betting on a contest that was unknown. Global but not specific self-concepts independently predicted betting on a multi-faceted contest. Mediation analyses suggest that self-concepts guide decisions by influencing the perceived likelihood of success. Participants’ were more overconfident about their chances of winning when a task was unknown rather than familiar.     

The development of metacognitive ability in adolescence

Introspection, or metacognition, is the capacity to reflect on our own thoughts and behaviours. Here, we investigated how one specific metacognitive ability (the relationship between task performance and confidence) develops in adolescence, a period of life associated with the emergence of self-concept and enhanced self-awareness. We employed a task that dissociates objective performance on a visual task from metacognitive ability in a group of 56 participants aged between 11 and 41 years. Metacognitive ability improved significantly with age during adolescence, was highest in late adolescence and plateaued going into adulthood. Our results suggest that awareness of one’s own perceptual decisions shows a prolonged developmental trajectory during adolescence.     

How Information Availability Interacts with Visual Attention during Judgment and Decision Tasks

Decisions in front of a supermarket shelf probably involve a mix of visually available information and associated memories—and interactions between those two. Several cognitive processes, such as decision making, search, and various judgments, are therefore likely to co‐occur, and each process will influence visual attention. We conducted two eye‐tracking experiments capturing parts of these features by having participants make either judgments or decisions concerning products that had been previously encoded. Half the time, participants made their choices with full information about the available products and half the time with crucial task‐relevant information removed. By comparing participants' use of visual attention during decisions and search‐based and memory‐based judgments, we can better understand how visual attention is differently employed between tasks and how it depends on the visual environment. We found that participants' visual attention during decisions is sensitive to evaluations already made during encoding and strongly characterized by preferential looking to the options later to be chosen. When the task environment is rich enough, participants engage in advanced integrative visual behavior and improve their decision quality. In contrast, visual attention during judgments made on the same products reflects a search‐like behavior when all information is available and a more focused type of visual behavior when information is removed. Our findings contribute not only to the literature on how visual attention is used during decision making but also to methodological questions concerning how to measure and identify task‐specific features of visual attention in ecologically valid ways. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Should metacognition be measured by logistic regression?

Are logistic regression slopes suitable to quantify metacognitive sensitivity, i.e. the efficiency with which subjective reports differentiate between correct and incorrect task responses? We analytically show that logistic regression slopes are independent from rating criteria in one specific model of metacognition, which assumes (i) that rating decisions are based on sensory evidence generated independently of the sensory evidence used for primary task responses and (ii) that the distributions of evidence are logistic. Given a hierarchical model of metacognition, logistic regression slopes depend on rating criteria. According to all considered models, regression slopes depend on the primary task criterion. A reanalysis of previous data revealed that massive numbers of trials are required to distinguish between hierarchical and independent models with tolerable accuracy. It is argued that researchers who wish to use logistic regression as measure of metacognitive sensitivity need to control the primary task criterion and rating criteria.     

Do birds (pigeons and bantams) know how confident they are of their perceptual decisions?

Rhesus monkeys are known to recognize confidence about their immediate perceptual and cognitive decisions by using a betting procedure (Son and Kornell in The missing link in cognition: origins of self-reflective consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 296–320, 2005; Kornell et al. in Psychol Sci 18:64–71, 2007). In this report, we examined whether this ability is shared in two avian species (pigeons and bantams) in order to know how widespread this metacognitive ability is among animals. We trained pigeons and bantams to search for a differently colored disk (target) among others (distracters) displayed on a touch-sensitive monitor. In test, the subjects were required to choose one of two confidence icons, “risk” and “safe”, after the visual search. A peck at the “risk” icon after a correct response in the visual search (i.e., a peck at the target) was reinforced by food and light, while that after an incorrect response (i.e., a peck at a distracter) resulted in a timeout. A peck at the “safe” icon was always reinforced by food and light, or by light only, regardless of the visual search result. The percentages of “safe” choices after incorrect responses were higher than after correct responses in all six pigeons and two of three bantams. This behavior generalized to novel stimuli in some subjects, and even to a novel line-classification task in a pigeon. These results suggest that these two distantly related avian species have in common a metacognitive ability that allows them to recognize confidence about their immediate perceptual decisions.     

Information seeking by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

Animal metacognition is an active, growing research area, and one part of metacognition is flexible information-seeking behavior. In Roberts et al. (2009), pigeons failed an intuitive information-seeking task. They basically refused, despite multiple fostering experiments, to view a sample image before attempting to find its match. Roberts et al. concluded that pigeons’ lack of an information-seeking capacity reflected their broader lack of metacognition. We report a striking species contrast to pigeons. Eight rhesus macaques and seven capuchin monkeys passed the Roberts et al. test of information seeking—often in their first testing session. Members of both primate species appreciated immediately the lack of information signaled by an occluded sample, and the need for an information-seeking response to manage the situation. In subsequent testing, macaques demonstrated flexible/varied forms of information management. Capuchins did not. The research findings bear on the phylogenetic distribution of metacognition across the vertebrates, and on the underlying psychological requirements for metacognitive and information-seeking performances.     

Metacognitive-like information seeking in lion-tailed macaques: a generalized search response after all?

Previous research has demonstrated that Old World primates (both apes and monkeys) seek information about the location of a hidden food item, unless they are privy to the hiding process. This has been cited as evidence of metacognition. However, these results could also be interpreted using non-metacognitive accounts, including a generalized search response to uncertainty, in which subjects reach for food when it is seen, or search for food until it is spotted. In the present research, lion-tailed macaques were tested on an object-choice task. Conditions varied with respect to the visibility of the baiting process, and whether the location of the hidden food could be inferred by logical exclusion. Additionally, the hidden food could be located visually before a choice was made, by peering under the objects through a Plexiglas tray. Across conditions, monkeys consistently looked for the food when it had not been seen, even if its location could be inferred, despite the fact that these monkeys are capable of inference by exclusion. This suggests that apparently ‘metacognitive’ information seeking in monkeys may instead reflect a generalized search strategy. Alternatively, it is possible that monkeys only have metacognitive access to certain types of knowledge, including that obtained visually. Results are discussed with respect to the likelihood of metacognition in this species and the evolutionary emergence of metacognition across species.     

A comparison of adults’ and children's metacognition for yes/no recognition decisions

Basic metacognitive development research suggests that metacognitive abilities develop before adolescence. However, this research has not used tasks that require the discrimination of seen from unseen stimuli, an important element of real-world recognition tasks such as eyewitness identification. We tested the idea that children would be less able to monitor and control the accuracy of their memories in such a task. We used a word-pair recognition task to compare children's (109 8–12 year olds) and adult's (102 first-year psychology students) ability to adaptively make, monitor, and control the reporting of yes/no recognition decisions about familiar stimuli in a task with no demand effects. We found that adults were substantially better at discriminating old from new stimuli, but no evidence of an age difference in metacognitive ability. Although these results do not explain children's poor metacognition in eyewitness identification, they suggest potential steps to improve children's identification performance.     

Rhesus monkeys (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Macaca mulatta</Emphasis>) discriminate between knowing and not knowing and collect information as needed before acting

Humans use memory awareness to determine whether relevant knowledge is available before acting, as when we determine whether we know a phone number before dialing. Such metacognition, or thinking about thinking, can improve selection of appropriate behavior. We investigated whether rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) are capable of a simple form of metacognitive access to the contents of short-term memory. Monkeys chose among four opaque tubes, one of which concealed food. The tube containing the reward varied randomly from trial to trial. On half the trials the monkeys observed the experimenter baiting the tube, whereas on the remaining trials their view of the baiting was blocked. On each trial, monkeys were allowed a single chance to select the tube containing the reward. During the choice period the monkeys had the opportunity to look down the length of each tube, to determine if it contained food. When they knew the location of the reward, most monkeys chose without looking. In contrast, when ignorant, monkeys often made the effort required to look, thereby learning the location of the reward before choosing. Looking improved accuracy on trials on which monkeys had not observed the baiting. The difference in looking behavior between trials on which the monkeys knew, and trials on which they were ignorant, suggests that rhesus monkeys discriminate between knowing and not knowing. This result extends similar observations made of children and apes to a species of Old World monkey, suggesting that the underlying cognitive capacities may be widely distributed among primates.     

The memorizing effort heuristic in judgments of learning: A developmental perspective

Recent work on adult metacognition indicates that although metacognitive monitoring often guides control operations, sometimes it follows control operations and is based on the feedback from them. Consistent with this view, in self-paced learning, judgments of learning (JOLs) made at the end of each study trial decreased with the amount of time spent studying the item, suggesting that JOLs are based on the memorizing effort heuristic that easily learned items are more likely to be remembered. Study 1 extended investigation to primary school children. Whereas for third to sixth graders (9- to 12-year-olds) JOLs decreased with increasing study time (ST), no such relationship was found for first and second graders (7- and 8-year-olds). For both age groups, however, recall decreased with ST, supporting the validity of the memorizing effort heuristic. Self-reports (Study 2) disclosed the belief that recall should tend to increase with ST. The results bring to the fore the importance of mnemonic cues that shape metacognitive feelings even among primary school children. These cues lie in the very feedback that learners gain on-line from task performance rather than in metacognitive knowledge, and their use may also contribute to increased monitoring accuracy with age.     

The subjective experience of object recognition: comparing metacognition for object detection and object categorization

Perceptual decisions seem to be made automatically and almost instantly. Constructing a unitary subjective conscious experience takes more time. For example, when trying to avoid a collision with a car on a foggy road you brake or steer away in a reflex, before realizing you were in a near accident. This subjective aspect of object recognition has been given little attention. We used metacognition (assessed with confidence ratings) to measure subjective experience during object detection and object categorization for degraded and masked objects, while objective performance was matched. Metacognition was equal for degraded and masked objects, but categorization led to higher metacognition than did detection. This effect turned out to be driven by a difference in metacognition for correct rejection trials, which seemed to be caused by an asymmetry of the distractor stimulus: It does not contain object-related information in the detection task, whereas it does contain such information in the categorization task. Strikingly, this asymmetry selectively impacted metacognitive ability when objective performance was matched. This finding reveals a fundamental difference in how humans reflect versus act on information: When matching the amount of information required to perform two tasks at some objective level of accuracy (acting), metacognitive ability (reflecting) is still better in tasks that rely on positive evidence (categorization) than in tasks that rely more strongly on an absence of evidence (detection).     

Self-regulated learning among teacher education students: Motivational beliefs influence on the use of metacognition

In the present study, we examined the relationships between motivational beliefs (self-efficacy, task value, and control of learning beliefs) and use of metacognitive learning strategies among teacher education students in Uganda. The sample comprised of 649 students selected from seven universities. Data were collected using several scales from the modified Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, and analysed using Structural Equation Modelling. Task value and self-efficacy independently and significantly predicted students’ reported use of metacognition. Students’ self-reported self-efficacy and task value explained 38% of the variance in their use of metacognition. The evidence suggests interventions aimed at improving teacher education students’ metacognitive skills to focus on enhancing their efficacy and value beliefs.     

Creative Metacognitive Feelings as a Source of Information for Creative Self-efficacy,Creativity Potential,Intrapersonal Idea Selection,and Task Enjoyment

Creativity scholars try to untangle the commonalities and differences between creative self-beliefs: creative self-efficacy, creative self-concept, creative metacognition, and creative role identity. While these efforts are already contributing significantly, we would like to suggest that for creative metacognition, we need to go beyond the assessment of confidence beliefs and regulation and include creative metacognitive feelings and intrapersonal idea selection as two additional components. To test the validity of our proposition, this study examined the influence of creative metacognitive feelings on creative self-efficacy, creative potential, accurate intrapersonal idea selection (agreement between individuals’ selection of their most creative idea and two independent judges’ selection of the participants’ best idea), and task enjoyment. To elicit metacognitive feelings, participants were randomly assigned to remember and write down two or six instances in their lives in which they generated novel and useful ideas that helped solve a problem. Participants then completed a questionnaire assessing creative self-efficacy, ease of recall as a proxy of metacognitive feelings, performance on a divergent thinking task, and task enjoyment. Results showed an indirect influence of recalling fewer examples on creative self-efficacy through its influence on metacognitive feelings. Metacognitive feelings then had an indirect influence, through creative self-efficacy, on creative potential and task enjoyment.     

Visually guided facial actions in rhesus monkeys

We trained 2 monkeys to display facial actions in response to corresponding arbitrary visual cues. Each monkey executed the task successfully, and each displayed two different facial actions corresponding to either hand-sign or color cues. More than 90% of the responses were correct for each monkey. These results provide evidence that monkeys can execute facial actions in response to conditioned visual cues in the absence of social context. These data suggest that facial actions of monkeys are flexible enough for use in further laboratory investigations—for example, in studies on the neural mechanisms underlying the execution of actions.     

‘Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!’: Effects of Streaks on Confidence and Betting in a Binary Choice Task

Human choice under uncertainty is influenced by erroneous beliefs about randomness. In simple binary choice tasks, such as red/black predictions in roulette, long outcome runs (e.g. red, red, red) typically increase the tendency to predict the other outcome (i.e. black), an effect labeled the “gambler's fallacy.” In these settings, participants may also attend to streaks in their predictive performance. Winning and losing streaks are thought to affect decision confidence, although prior work indicates conflicting directions. Over three laboratory experiments involving red/black predictions in a sequential roulette task, we sought to identify the effects of outcome runs and winning/losing streaks upon color predictions, decision confidence and betting behavior. Experiments 1 (n = 40) and 3 (n = 40) obtained trial‐by‐trial confidence ratings, with a win/no win payoff and a no loss/loss payoff, respectively. Experiment 2 (n = 39) obtained a trial‐by‐trial bet amount on an equivalent scale. In each experiment, the gambler's fallacy was observed on choice behavior after color runs and, in experiment 2, on betting behavior after color runs. Feedback streaks exerted no reliable influence on confidence ratings, in either payoff condition. Betting behavior, on the other hand, increased as a function of losing streaks. The increase in betting on losing streaks is interpreted as a manifestation of loss chasing; these data help clarify the psychological mechanisms underlying loss chasing and caution against the use of betting measures (“post‐decision wagering”) as a straightforward index of decision confidence. © 2014 The Authors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.