The precision test of metacognitive sensitivity and confidence criteria

Arnold, Derek H.; Clendinen, Mitchell; Johnston, Alan; Lee, Alan L.F.; Yarrow, Kielan

Abstract

Humans experience feelings of confidence in their decisions. In perception, these feelings are typically accurate – we tend to feel more confident about correct decisions. The degree of insight people have into the accuracy of their decisions is known as metacognitive sensitivity. Currently popular methods of estimating metacognitive sensitivity are subject to interpretive ambiguities because they assume people have normally shaped distributions of different experiences when they are repeatedly exposed to a single input. If this normality assumption is violated, calculations can erroneously underestimate metacognitive sensitivity. Here, we describe a means of estimating metacognitive sensitivity that is more robust to violations of the normality assumption. This improved method can easily be added to standard behavioral experiments, and the authors provide Matlab code to help researchers implement these analyses and experimental procedures.

Citation

Arnold, D. H., Clendinen, M., Johnston, A., Lee, A. L., & Yarrow, K. (2024). The precision test of metacognitive sensitivity and confidence criteria. Consciousness and Cognition, 123, Article 103728. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2024.103728

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 2, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Jul 16, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024-08
• Deposit Date: Sep 20, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 17, 2025
• Journal: Consciousness and Cognition
• Print ISSN: 1053-8100
• Electronic ISSN: 1090-2376
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 123
• Article Number: 103728
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2024.103728
• Keywords: Confidence, Signal detection theory, Perceptual metacognition
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/38100320
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810024000953?via%3Dihub