Reverse engineering of metacognition

Abstract

AbstractThe human ability to introspect on thoughts, perceptions or actions − metacognitive ability − has become a focal topic of both cognitive basic and clinical research. At the same time it has become increasingly clear that currently available quantitative tools are limited in their ability to make unconfounded inferences about metacognition. As a step forward, the present work introduces a comprehensive framework and model of metacognition that allows for inferences about metacognitive noise and metacognitive biases during the readout of type 1 decision values or at the confidence reporting stage. The model assumes that confidence results from a continuous but noisy and potentially biased transformation of decision values, described by a confidence link function. A canonical set of metacognitive noise distributions is introduced which differ, amongst others, in their predictions about metacognitive sign flips of type 1 decision values. Successful recovery of model parameters is demonstrated and the model is validated on an empirical data set. In particular, it is shown that metacognitive noise and bias parameters correlate with conventional behavioral measures. Crucially, in contrast to these conventional measures, metacognitive noise parameters inferred from the model are shown to be independent of type 1 performance. This work is accompanied by a toolbox (ReMeta) that allows researchers to estimate key parameters of metacognition in confidence datasets.