Post-decision wagering after perceptual judgments reveals bi-directional certainty readouts

Abstract

Humans and other animals constantly evaluate their decisions in order to learn and behave adaptively. Experimentally, such evaluation processes are accessed using metacognitive reports made after decisions, typically using verbally formulated confidence scales. When subjects report high confidence, it reflects a high certainty of being correct, but a low confidence might signify either low certainty about the outcome, or a high certainty of being incorrect. Hence, metacognitive reports might reflect not only different levels of decision certainty, but also two certainty directions (certainty of being correct and certainty of being incorrect). It is important to test if such bi-directional processing can be measured because, for decision-making under uncertainty, information about being incorrect is as important as information about being correct for guidance of subsequent behavior. We were able to capture implicit bi-directional certainty readouts by asking subjects to bet money on their perceptual decision accuracy using a six-grade wager scale (post-decision wagering, PDW). To isolate trial-specific aspects of metacognitive judgments, we used pre-decision wagering (wagering before the perceptual decision) to subtract, from PDW trials, influences resulting from non-trial-specific assessment of expected difficulty and psychological biases. This novel design allowed independent quantification of certainty of being correct and certainty of being incorrect, showing that subjects were able to read out certainty in a bi-directional manner. Certainty readouts about being incorrect were particularly associated with metacognitive sensitivity exceeding perceptual sensitivity (i.e. meta-d' > d'), suggesting that such enhanced metacognitive efficiency is driven by information about incorrect decisions. Readouts of certainty in both directions increased on easier trials, and both certainty directions were also associated with faster metacognitive reaction times, indicating that certainty of being incorrect was not confounded with low certainty. Finally, both readouts influenced the amount of money subjects earned through PDW, suggesting that bi-directional readouts are important for planning future actions when feedback about previous decisions is unavailable.

Confirmation bias is adaptive when coupled with efficient metacognition

“…However, this kind of pattern is commonly observed in empirical data (Fleming & Daw, 2017;Moreira et al, 2018), and is thought to be driven either by additional post-decisional processing, differences in the variance of signal compared to noise (Miyoshi & Lau, 2020) or (as simulated here) parallel streams of information processing that allows the system to detect and correct its errors (Moreira et al, 2018). The capacity for rapid error detection is well established in human studies (Murphy et al, 2015;Rabbitt, 1966;Resulaj et al, 2009;Van Den Berg et al, 2016;Yeung & Summerfield, 2012) and thus it is reasonable to assume that hyper metacognitive efficiency may be common in the healthy population.…”

“…For instance, confidence may reflect a noisy read-out of the decision evidence or a decline of decision evidence in working memory prior to a confidence judgment(Maniscalco & Lau, 2012), leading to a meta-d'/d' ratio of less than 1. On the other hand, confidence might be informed by evidence that was not available at the time of decision(Moran et al, 2015;Moreira et al, 2018;Pleskac & Busemeyer, 2010), or on correlated evidence that is accumulated in parallel(Fleming & Daw, 2017), both of which may lead meta-d'/d' ratios to surpass 1.…”

Measuring Metacognition of Direct and Indirect Parameters of Voluntary Movement

“…Our task yielded point estimates of performance, insensitive to the temporal dimension of the decision-making process, but emphasising speed over accuracy in the type I task can affect confidence ratings (Pleskac & Busemeyer, 2010;Vickers & Packer, 1982). Differences in the dynamics of post-decisional METACOGNITION OF DIRECT AND INDIRECT PARAMETERS OF MOVEMENT 39 information accumulation may also affect measures of metacognitive ability (Moreira et al, 2018).…”

Postdecision Evidence Integration and Depressive Symptoms

“…Metacognitive evaluations have been tightly linked to postdecision evidence processing (22, 23) or the utilization of information not yet available for the decision itself (24). This process of ongoing evidence integration that occurs postdecision is especially important for recognising errors or changing one’s mind (25–27). Thus, recent studies have sought to identify mechanisms supporting postdecision processing (28, 29) and link such mechanisms to metacognitive ability (30, 31).…”