Erratum: How experimental procedures influence estimates of metacognitive ability

The future of metacognition research: Balancing construct breadth with measurement rigor

Foundational work in the psychology of metacognition identified a distinction between metacognitive knowledge (stable beliefs about one's capacities) and metacognitive experiences (local evaluations of performance). More recently, the field has focused on developing tasks and metrics that seek to identify metacognitive capacities from momentary estimates of confidence in performance, and providing precise computational accounts of metacognitive failure. However, this notable progress in formalising models of metacognitive judgments may come at a cost of ignoring broader elements of the psychology of metacognition - such as how stable meta-knowledge is formed, how social cognition and metacognition interact, and how we evaluate affective states that do not have an obvious ground truth. We propose that construct breadth in metacognition research can be restored while maintaining rigour in measurement, and highlight promising avenues for expanding the scope of metacognition research. Such a research programme is well placed to recapture qualitative features of metacognitive knowledge and experience while maintaining the psychophysical rigor that characterises modern research on confidence and performance monitoring.

Think twice: Re-assessing confidence improves visual metacognition

Metacognition is a fundamental feature of human behavior that has adaptive functional value. Current understanding of the factors that influence metacognition remains incomplete, and we lack protocols to improve metacognition. Here, we introduce a two-step confidence choice paradigm to test whether metacognitive performance may improve by asking subjects to reassess their initial confidence. Previous work on perceptual and mnemonic decision-making has shown that (type 1) perceptual sensitivity benefits from reassessing the primary choice, however, it is not clear whether such an effect occurs for type 2 confidence choices. To test this hypothesis, we ran two separate online experiments, in which participants completed a type 1 task followed by two consecutive confidence choices. The results of the two experiments indicated that metacognitive sensitivity improved after re-evaluation. Since post-decisional evidence accumulation following the first confidence choice is likely to be minimal, this metacognitive improvement is better accounted for by an attenuation of metacognitive noise during the process of confidence generation. Thus, here we argue that metacognitive noise may be filtered out by additional post-decisional processing, thereby improving metacognitive sensitivity. We discuss the ramifications of these findings for models of metacognition and for developing protocols to train and manipulate metacognitive processes.

Episodic and semantic feeling-of-knowing in aging: a systematic review and meta-analysis

A complex pattern of preservation and deterioration in metacognition in aging is found, especially regarding predicting future memory retrieval (i.e., feeling-of-knowing, FOK). While semantic FOK (sFOK) is preserved with age, studies on episodic tasks (eFOK) produce equivocal findings. We present a meta-analysis of 20 studies on eFOK and sFOK, analyzing the difference in metacognitive sensitivity between 922 younger and 966 older adults, taking into account the difference in memory performance. The sFOK studies yielded no overall age effect (8 effects, g = -0.10 [-0.29, 0.10]). However, we found a reliable age-group difference on eFOK (22 effects, g = 0.53 [0.28, 0.78]), which was moderated when considering recognition performance. Moreover, using aggregated data of 134 young and 235 older adults from published and unpublished studies from our lab, we investigated memory performance as an explanation of the eFOK deficit. We show that older adults are less metacognitively sensitive than younger adults for eFOKs which is, at least partly, due to the age-related memory decline. We highlight two non-exclusive explanations: a recollection deficit at play in the first and second order tasks, and a confound between first order performance and the measure used to assess metacognitive sensitivity.

Age-related decreases in global metacognition are independent of local metacognition and task performance

Metacognition refers to a capacity to reflect on and control other cognitive processes, commonly quantified as the extent to which confidence tracks objective performance. There is conflicting evidence about how "local" metacognition (monitoring of individual judgments) and "global" metacognition (estimates of self-performance) change across the lifespan. Additionally, the degree to which metacognition generalises across cognitive domains may itself change with age due to increased experience with one's own abilities. Using a gamified suite of performance-controlled memory and visual perception tasks, we measured local and global metacognition in an age-stratified sample of 304 healthy volunteers (18-83 years; N = 50 in each of 6 age groups). We calculated both local and global metrics of metacognition and quantified how and whether domain-generality changes with age. First-order task performance was stable across the age range. People's global self-performance estimates and local metacognitive bias decreased with age, indicating overall lower confidence in performance. In contrast, local metacognitive efficiency was spared in older age and remained correlated across the two cognitive domains. A stability of local metacognition indicates distinct mechanisms contributing to local and global metacognition. Our study reveals how local and global metacognition change across the lifespan and provide a benchmark against which disease-related changes in metacognition can be compared.

Psychiatrically relevant signatures of domain-general decision-making and metacognition in the general population

Human behaviours are guided by how confident we feel in our abilities. When confidence does not reflect objective performance, this can impact critical adaptive functions and impair life quality. Distorted decision-making and confidence have been associated with mental health problems. Here, utilising advances in computational and transdiagnostic psychiatry, we sought to map relationships between psychopathology and both decision-making and confidence in the general population across two online studies (N's = 344 and 473, respectively). The results revealed dissociable decision-making and confidence signatures related to distinct symptom dimensions. A dimension characterised by compulsivity and intrusive thoughts was found to be associated with reduced objective accuracy but, paradoxically, increased absolute confidence, whereas a dimension characterized by anxiety and depression was associated with systematically low confidence in the absence of impairments in objective accuracy. These relationships replicated across both studies and distinct cognitive domains (perception and general knowledge), suggesting that they are reliable and domain general. Additionally, whereas Big-5 personality traits also predicted objective task performance, only symptom dimensions related to subjective confidence. Domain-general signatures of decision-making and metacognition characterise distinct psychological dispositions and psychopathology in the general population and implicate confidence as a central component of mental health.

Restricted Access to Working Memory Does Not Prevent Cumulative Score Improvement in a Cultural Evolution Task

Some theories propose that human cumulative culture is dependent on explicit, system-2, metacognitive processes. To test this, we investigated whether access to working memory is required for cumulative cultural evolution. We restricted access to adults’ working-memory (WM) via a dual-task paradigm, to assess whether this reduced performance in a cultural evolution task, and a metacognitive monitoring task. In total, 247 participants completed either a grid search task or a metacognitive monitoring task in conjunction with a WM task and a matched control. Participants’ behaviour in the grid search task was then used to simulate the outcome of iterating the task over multiple generations. Participants in the grid search task scored higher after observing higher-scoring examples, but could only beat the scores of low-scoring example trials. Scores did not differ significantly between the control and WM distractor blocks, although more errors were made when under WM load. The simulation showed similar levels of cumulative score improvement across conditions. However, scores plateaued without reaching the maximum. Metacognitive efficiency was low in both blocks, with no indication of dual-task interference. Overall, we found that taxing working-memory resources did not prevent cumulative score improvement on this task, but impeded it slightly relative to a control distractor task. However, we found no evidence that the dual-task manipulation impacted participants’ ability to use explicit metacognition. Although we found minimal evidence in support of the explicit metacognition theory of cumulative culture, our results provide valuable insights into empirical approaches that could be used to further test predictions arising from this account.

The development of uncertainty monitoring during kindergarten: Change and longitudinal relations with executive function and vocabulary in children from low-income backgrounds

Children's ability to monitor subjective feelings of uncertainty (i.e., engage in uncertainty monitoring) is a central metacognitive skill. In the current study, we examined the development of uncertainty monitoring as well as its relations with vocabulary and executive function development in children (N = 137, 52% female) from predominately White and Latinx/Hispanic backgrounds when they were 4-6 years old and enrolled in a Head Start preschool and kindergarten between 2018 and 2019. We found that children's uncertainty monitoring improved during the kindergarten year. Children's executive function and vocabulary in preschool and vocabulary growth from preschool to kindergarten predicted uncertainty monitoring at the end of kindergarten, which sheds new light on potential mechanisms supporting children's metacognitive development.

The Filter Detection Task for measurement of breathing-related interoception and metacognition

The study of the brain's processing of sensory inputs from within the body ('interoception') has been gaining rapid popularity in neuroscience, where interoceptive disturbances are thought to exist across a wide range of chronic physiological and psychological conditions. Here we present a task and analysis procedure to quantify specific dimensions of breathing-related interoception, including interoceptive sensitivity, decision bias, metacognitive bias, and metacognitive performance. Two major developments address some of the challenges presented by low trial numbers in interoceptive experiments: (i) a novel adaptive algorithm to maintain task performance at 70-75% accuracy; (ii) an extended hierarchical metacognitive model to estimate regression parameters linking metacognitive performance to relevant (e.g. clinical) variables. We demonstrate the utility of the task and analysis developments, using both simulated data and three empirical datasets. This methodology represents an important step towards accurately quantifying interoceptive dimensions from a simple experimental procedure that is compatible with clinical settings.

Limited evidence for executive function load impairing selective copying in a win-stay lose-shift task

The use of ‘explicitly metacognitive’ learning strategies has been proposed as an explanation for uniquely human capacities for cumulative culture. Such strategies are proposed to rely on explicit, system-2 cognitive processes, to enable advantageous selective copying. To investigate the plausibility of this theory, we investigated participants’ ability to make flexible learning decisions, and their metacognitive monitoring efficiency, under executive function (EF) load. Adult participants completed a simple win-stay lose-shift (WSLS) paradigm task, intended to model a situation where presented information can be used to inform response choice, by copying rewarded responses and avoiding those that are unrewarded. This was completed alongside a concurrent switching task. Participants were split into three conditions: those that needed to use a selective copying, WSLS strategy, those that should always copy observed information, and those that should always do the opposite (Expt 1). Participants also completed a metacognitive monitoring task alongside the concurrent switching task (Expt 2). Conditions demanding selective strategies were more challenging than those requiring the use of one rule consistently. In addition, consistently copying was less challenging than consistently avoiding observed stimuli. Differences between selectively copying and always copying were hypothesised to stem from working memory requirements rather than the concurrent EF load. No impact of EF load was found on participants’ metacognitive monitoring ability. These results suggest that copying decisions are underpinned by the use of executive functions even at a very basic level, and that selective copying strategies are more challenging than a combination of their component parts. We found minimal evidence that selective copying strategies relied on executive functions any more than consistent copying or deviation. However, task experience effects suggested that ceiling effects could have been masking differences between conditions which might be apparent in other contexts, such as when observed information must be retained in memory.

Sources of Metacognitive Inefficiency

Confidence judgments are typically less informative about one's accuracy than they could be; a phenomenon we call metacognitive inefficiency. We review the existence of different sources of metacognitive inefficiency and classify them into four categories based on whether the corruption is due to: (i) systematic or nonsystematic influences, and (ii) the input to or the computation of the metacognitive system. Critically, the existence of different sources of metacognitive inefficiency provides an alternative explanation for behavioral findings typically interpreted as evidence for domain-specific (and against domain-general) metacognitive systems. We argue that, contrary to the dominant assumption in the field, metacognitive failures are not monolithic and suggest that understanding the sources of metacognitive inefficiency should be a primary goal of the science of metacognition.