Heuristic use of perceptual evidence leads to dissociation between performance and metacognitive sensitivity
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Zylberberg et al. [Zylberberg, Barttfeld, & Sigman (Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 6; 79, 2012), Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience 6:79] found that confidence decisions, but not perceptual decisions, are insensitive to evidence against a selected perceptual choice. We present a signal detection theoretic model to formalize this insight, which gave rise to a counter-intuitive empirical prediction: that depending on the observer's perceptual choice, increasing task performance can be associated with decreasing metacognitive sensitivity (i.e., the trial-by-trial correspondence between confidence and accuracy). The model also provides an explanation as to why metacognitive sensitivity tends to be less than optimal in actual subjects. These predictions were confirmed robustly in a psychophysics experiment. In a second experiment we found that, in at least some subjects, the effects were replicated even under performance feedback designed to encourage optimal behavior. However, some subjects did show improvement under feedback, suggesting the tendency to ignore evidence against a selected perceptual choice may be a heuristic adopted by the perceptual decision-making system, rather than reflecting inherent biological limitations. We present a Bayesian modeling framework that explains why this heuristic strategy may be advantageous in real-world contexts.
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Correctness feedback was withheld during testing to avoid the possibility that confidence simply reflects a learned mapping between stimulus orientation and reliability and the probability of being correct.
“During testing, correctness feedback was withheld to avoid the possibility that confidence simply reflects a learned mapping between stimulus orientation and reliability and the probability of being correct [30–33].”
From Comparing Bayesian and non-Bayesian accounts of human confidence reports (2018) · cites this paper as [31]
The Experiment 2 section says the authors provided performance feedback to test whether participants would change how they judged confidence, and the Discussion reports a change in two of four observers. This supports the general concern that feedback can affect confidence judgments, but the paper does not say feedback was withheld to prevent learning a mapping between stimulus orientation, reliability, and correctness. The experiments instead varied stimulus strength and used randomly oriented gratings. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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“…is also compatible with the observation in other studies that confidence and accuracy can be dissociated under different experimental conditions (Lau & Passingham, 2006; Rahnev et al., 2011; Rahnev, Maniscalco, Luber, Lau, & Lisanby, 2012; Rounis, Maniscalco, Rothwell, Passingham, & Lau, 2010;…”
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Maniscalco, B., Peters, M. A. K., & Lau, H.
- Affiliations
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Corresponding author
- Maniscalco, Brian
- Venue
- Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
- Published
- 2016-01-20
- Volume
- 78
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 923-937
- ISSN
- 1943-3921 (ISSN-L)
- 1943-393X
- PMC
- PMC4811689
- OpenAlex
- W2291264888
- Cited by
- 129
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 4
- FWCI
- 6.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Attention Perception & Psychophysics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- The HKU Scholars Hub (University of Hong Kong) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- John Templeton Foundation (6-40689)
- National Institutes of Health (NIH R01 NS088628-01)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- metacognitive sensitivity, perceptual confidence, perceptual decision making, signal detection theory, Bayesian model, performance feedback, metacognition
- MeSH terms
- Heuristics, Metacognition, Bayes Theorem, Choice Behavior, Humans, Models, Psychological, Psychomotor Performance, Visual Perception, Signal Detection, Psychological, Feedback, Psychological
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