The effect of self-efficacy on visual discrimination sensitivity
Open accessAbstract
Can subjective belief about one's own perceptual competence change one's perception? To address this question, we investigated the influence of self-efficacy on sensory discrimination in two low-level visual tasks: contrast and orientation discrimination. We utilised a pre-post manipulation approach whereby two experimental groups (high and low self-efficacy) and a control group made objective perceptual judgments on the contrast or the orientation of the visual stimuli. High and low self-efficacy were induced by the provision of fake social-comparative performance feedback and fictional research findings. Subsequently, the post-manipulation phase was performed to assess changes in visual discrimination thresholds as a function of the self-efficacy manipulations. The results showed that the high self-efficacy group demonstrated greater improvement in visual discrimination sensitivity compared to both the low self-efficacy and control groups. These findings suggest that subjective beliefs about one's own perceptual competence can affect low-level visual processing.
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It has been shown for other domains of cognition, including visual discrimination performance, that a prior belief of mastery enhances actual performance.
“Notably, while this type of metacognitive mechanism remains to be established for interoception and allostasis, it has been shown for other domains of cognition, including low-level processes such as visual discrimination performance (Zacharopoulos et al., 2014), that a prior belief of mastery enhances the actual performance (for reviews, see Bandura, 1977, 1989).”
From Allostatic Self-efficacy: A Metacognitive Theory of Dyshomeostasis-Induced Fatigue and Depression (2016) · cites this paper as Zacharopoulos et al., 2014
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- Authors
- Zacharopoulos, G., Binetti, N., Walsh, V., & Kanai, R.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Zacharopoulos, George
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2014-10-08
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- e109392
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4190082
- OpenAlex
- W2161801802
- Cited by
- 22
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 2 · 2016: 4
- FWCI
- 0.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Education, Achievement, and Giftedness
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- self-efficacy, visual discrimination, contrast discrimination, orientation discrimination, perceptual sensitivity, low-level vision, perceptual thresholds
- MeSH terms
- Female, Humans, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Surveys and Questionnaires, Visual Perception, Self Efficacy
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