Improvement of association between confidence and accuracy after integration of separate evidence over time

Abstract

When making decisions in real-life, we may receive discrete pieces of evidence during a time period. Although subjects are able to integrate information from separate cues to improve their accuracy, confidence formation is controversial. Due to a strong positive relation between accuracy and confidence, we predicted that confidence followed the same characteristics as accuracy and would improve following the integration of information collected from separate cues. We applied a Random-dot-motion discrimination task in which participants had to indicate the predominant direction of dot motions by saccadic eye movement after receiving one or two brief stimuli (i.e., pulse(s)). The interval of two pulses (up to 1s) was selected randomly. Color-coded targets facilitated indicating confidence simultaneously. Using behavioral data, computational models, pupillometry and EEG methodology we show that in double-pulse trials: (i) participants improve their confidence resolution rather than reporting higher confidence comparing with single-pulse trials, (ii) the observed confidence follow neural and pupillometry markers of confidence, unlike in weak and brief single-pulse trials. Overall, our study showed improvement of associations between confidence and accuracy in decision results from the integration of stimulus separated by different temporal gaps.

Two distinct stimulus-locked EEG signatures reliably encode domain-general confidence during decision formation

“…Based on the topography and timing of the observed clusters, they possibly represent opposite dipoles of the late portion of the P3/central parietal positivity (CPP) component previously implicated in decision-making and subjective measures of perception including confidence (Azizi et al, 2021;Feuerriegel et al, 2022;Fitzgerald et al, 2022;Gherman & Philiastides, 2015Herding et al, 2019;Lim et al, 2020;Tagliabue et al, 2019). Participants' confidence tended to be higher on trials with stronger late CPP amplitude irrespective of the cognitive domain tested, thus highlighting that the CPP reliably reflects domain-general subjective confidence over and above the external stimulus information (i.e., difficulty) and objective accuracy.…”

“…Electroencephalography (EEG) allows for measurement of metacognitively relevant neural activity with high temporal resolution. Previous studies have shown that the strength of stimulus-locked EEG responses during decision formation, including the central parietal positivity/P3 component, scale with the reported and/or implicit level of confidence (Azizi et al, 2021;Feuerriegel et al, 2022;Fitzgerald et al, 2022;Gherman & Philiastides, 2015Herding et al, 2019;Lim et al, 2020;Rausch et al, 2020;Zakrzewski et al, 2019). Additionally, fluctuations in confidence have also been shown to be dependent on both spontaneous and response-locked levels of EEG activity in the alpha-band (8-12Hz) (Faivre et al, 2018;Wöstmann et al, 2019).…”