Forming Global Estimates of Self-performance from Local Confidence

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Mar 10

PMID 30850612

Citations 36

Authors

Marion Rouault

Peter Dayan

Stephen M Fleming

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Metacognition, the ability to internally evaluate our own cognitive performance, is particularly useful since many real-life decisions lack immediate feedback. While most previous studies have focused on the construction of confidence at the level of single decisions, little is known about the formation of "global" self-performance estimates (SPEs) aggregated from multiple decisions. Here, we compare the formation of SPEs in the presence and absence of feedback, testing a hypothesis that local decision confidence supports the formation of SPEs when feedback is unavailable. We reveal that humans pervasively underestimate their performance in the absence of feedback, compared to a condition with full feedback, despite objective performance being unaffected. We find that fluctuations in confidence contribute to global SPEs over and above objective accuracy and reaction times. Our findings create a bridge between a computation of local confidence and global SPEs, and support a functional role for confidence in higher-order behavioral control.

Citing Articles

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