Alpha oscillations and stimulus-evoked activity dissociate metacognitive reports of attention, visibility and confidence in a rapid visual detection task

Davidson, Matthew; Macdonald, James S. P.; Yeung, Nick

doi:10.1101/2021.11.23.469669

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…Thus far, only a few studies have directly investigated the CPP's relationship with confidence and these have yielded apparently mixed results. While several studies have reported positive relationships between pre-choice CPP amplitude and confidence (Davidson et al, 2021;Gherman & Philiastides, 2015Herding et al, 2019;Pereira et al, 2021;Tagliabue et al, 2019), two studies found no such relationship (Feuerriegel et al, 2022;Rausch et al, 2020) .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Confidence is predicted by pre- and post-choice decision signal dynamics

Grogan

Rys

Kelly

et al. 2023

Preprint

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It is well established that one's confidence in a choice can be influenced by new evidence encountered after commitment has been reached, but the processes through which post-choice evidence is sampled remain unclear. To investigate this, we traced the pre- and post-choice dynamics of electrophysiological signatures of evidence accumulation (Centro-parietal Positivity, CPP) and motor preparation (mu/beta band) to determine their sensitivity to participants' confidence in their perceptual discriminations. Pre-choice CPP amplitudes scaled with confidence both when confidence was reported simultaneously with choice, or when reported 1-second after the initial direction decision. When additional evidence was presented during the post-choice delay period, the CPP continued to evolve after the initial choice, with a more prolonged build-up on trials with lower confidence in the alternative that was finally endorsed, irrespective of whether this entailed a change-of-mind. Further investigation established that this pattern was accompanied by earlier post-choice CPP peak latency, earlier lateralisation of motor preparation signals toward the ultimately chosen response, and faster confidence reports when participants indicated high certainty that they had made a correct or incorrect initial choice. These observations are consistent with confidence-dependent stopping theories according to which post-choice evidence accumulation ceases when a criterion level of confidence in a choice alternative has been reached. Our findings have implications for current models of choice confidence, and predictions they may make about EEG signatures.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Confidence is predicted by pre- and post-choice decision signal dynamics

Grogan

Rys

Kelly

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Alternatively, a quadratic modulation of decision confidence may reflect object-level (that is, not meta-level) inter-trial fluctuations in visual attention. As an example of how this might arise, a recent EEG study [ 27 ] revealed a negative linear relation between reported attention and pre-stimulus alpha power in the 8–12 Hz frequency band. By contrast, high levels of decision confidence were associated with intermediate pre-stimulus alpha power, giving rise to a negative quadratic relation between alpha power and confidence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-evaluating frontopolar and temporoparietal contributions to detection and discrimination confidence

2023

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Previously, we identified a subset of regions where the relation between decision confidence and univariate functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity was quadratic, with stronger activation for both high and low compared with intermediate levels of confidence. We further showed that, in a subset of these regions, this quadratic modulation appeared only for confidence in detection decisions about the presence or absence of a stimulus, and not for confidence in discrimination decisions about stimulus identity (Mazor et al. 2021). Here, in a pre-registered follow-up experiment, we sought to replicate our original findings and identify the origins of putative detection-specific confidence signals by introducing a novel asymmetric-discrimination condition. The new condition required discriminating two alternatives but was engineered such that the distribution of perceptual evidence was asymmetric, just as in yes/no detection. We successfully replicated the quadratic modulation of subjective confidence in prefrontal, parietal and temporal cortices. However, in contrast with our original report, this quadratic effect was similar in detection and discrimination responses, but stronger in the novel asymmetric-discrimination condition. We interpret our findings as weighing against the detection-specificity of confidence signatures and speculate about possible alternative origins of a quadratic modulation of decision confidence.

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“…Alternatively, a quadratic modulation of decision confidence may reflect object-level (that is, not meta-level) inter-trial fluctuations in visual attention. As an example of how this might arise, a recent EEG study (Davidson et al, 2021) revealed a negative linear relation between reported attention and pre-stimulus alpha power in the 8-12 HZ frequency band. In contrast, high levels of decision confidence were associated with intermediate prestimulus alpha power, giving rise to a negative quadratic relation between alpha power and confidence.…”

Section: A Quadratic Modulation Of Confidence: Ideas and Speculationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-evaluating frontopolar and temporoparietal contributions to detection and discrimination confidence

Mazor

Gong

Fleming

2022

Preprint

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Previously, we identified a subset of regions where the relation between decision confidence and univariate fMRI activity was quadratic, with stronger activation for both high and low compared to intermediate levels of confidence. We further showed that, in a subset of these regions, this quadratic modulation appeared only for confidence in detection decisions about the presence or absence of a stimulus, and not for confidence in discrimination decisions about stimulus identity (Mazor, Friston & Fleming, 2021). Here, in a pre-registered follow-up experiment, we sought to replicate our original findings and identify the origins of putative detection-specific confidence signals by introducing a novel asymmetric-discrimination condition: a discrimination task with the signal-detection properties of a detection task. This task required discriminating two alternatives (two different grating tilts) but was engineered such that the distribution of perceptual evidence was asymmetric, just as in yes/no detection. We successfully replicated the quadratic modulation of subjective confidence in prefrontal, parietal and temporal cortices. However, in contrast to our original report, this quadratic effect was similar in detection and discrimination responses, but stronger in the novel asymmetric-discrimination condition. We interpret our findings as weighing against the detection-specificity of confidence signatures and speculate about possible alternative origins of a quadratic modulation of decision confidence.

show abstract

Alpha oscillations and stimulus-evoked activity dissociate metacognitive reports of attention, visibility and confidence in a rapid visual detection task

Cited by 3 publications

References 110 publications

Confidence is predicted by pre- and post-choice decision signal dynamics

Confidence is predicted by pre- and post-choice decision signal dynamics

Re-evaluating frontopolar and temporoparietal contributions to detection and discrimination confidence

Re-evaluating frontopolar and temporoparietal contributions to detection and discrimination confidence

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