Humans incorporate attention-dependent uncertainty into perceptual decisions and confidence
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Abstract
Significance: We must routinely make decisions based on uncertain sensory information. Sometimes that uncertainty is related to our own cognitive state, such as when we are not paying attention. Do our decisions about what we perceive take into account our attentional state? Or are we blind to such internal sources of uncertainty, leading to poor decisions and overconfidence? We found that human observers take attention-dependent uncertainty into account when categorizing visual stimuli and reporting their confidence in a task in which uncertainty is relevant for performance. Moreover, they do so in an approximately Bayesian fashion. Human perceptual decision-making can therefore, at least in some cases, adjust in a statistically appropriate way to external and internal sources of uncertainty.
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People adjust their confidence criteria in the face of changing stimulus uncertainty.
“Other work has revealed how people adjust their confidence criteria in the face of changing stimulus uncertainty (Adler & Ma 2018, Aitchison et al. 2015, Denison et al. 2018).”
From Metacognition and Confidence: A Review and Synthesis (2024) · cites this paper as Denison et al. 2018
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Cites
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BackgroundMethodResultInfluentialSelf-citationTrial-to-trial, uncertainty-based adjustment of decision boundaries in visual categorization
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Suboptimality in perceptual decision making
Rahnev, D., & Denison, R. N. (2018) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x18000936 · Cited by 342 · see citing works
Self-citationThe Border Between Seeing and Thinking
Block, N. (2023) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197622223.001.0001 · Cited by 367 · see citing works
Metacognition and Confidence: A Review and Synthesis
Fleming, S. M. (2024) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-022423-032425 · Cited by 256 · see citing works
“Other work has revealed how people adjust their confidence criteria in the face of changing stimulus uncertainty (Aitchison et al., 2015, Adler & Ma, 2018, Denison et al., 2018).”
Comparing Bayesian and non-Bayesian accounts of human confidence reports
Adler, W. T., & Ma, W. J. (2018) · PLoS Computational Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006572 · Cited by 118 · see citing works
Self-citationSubjective confidence reflects representation of Bayesian probability in cortex
Geurts, L. S., Cooke, J. R. H., van Bergen, R. S., & Jehee, J. F. M. (2022) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-021-01247-w · Cited by 104 · see citing works
Consensus Goals in the Field of Visual Metacognition
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Self-citationWinter, C. J., & Peters, M. A. K. (2022) · Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics · doi:10.3758/s13414-021-02358-2 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
- Authors
- Denison, R. N., Adler, W. T., Carrasco, M., & Ma, W. J.
- Affiliations
- New York University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2018-10-08
- Volume
- 115
- Issue
- 43
- Pages
- 11090-11095
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC6205425
- OpenAlex
- W2953116647
- Cited by
- 122
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 5
- FWCI
- 5.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- HHS | NIH | National Eye Institute (F32EY025533, T32EY007136)
- National Science Foundation (DGE-1342536)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Keywords
- perceptual decision making, confidence judgments, Bayesian decision model, attentional cueing, decision boundaries, model comparison, visual attention
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Bayes Theorem, Cognition, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Male, Orientation, Task Performance and Analysis, Visual Perception, Uncertainty
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