Abstract
Perceptual decisions are accompanied by feelings of confidence that reflect the likelihood that the decision was correct. Here we aim to clarify the relationship between perception and confidence by studying the same perceptual task across three different confidence contexts. Human observers were asked to categorize the source of sequentially presented visual stimuli. Each additional stimulus provided evidence for making more accurate perceptual decisions, and better confidence judgements. We show that observers’ ability to set appropriate evidence accumulation bounds for perceptual decisions is strongly predictive of their ability to make accurate confidence judgements. When observers were not permitted to control their exposure to evidence, they imposed covert bounds on their perceptual decisions but not on their confidence decisions. This partial dissociation between decision processes is reflected in behaviour and pupil dilation. Together, these findings suggest a confidence-regulated accumulation-to-bound process that controls perceptual decision-making even in the absence of explicit speed-accuracy trade-offs.
Highlights
Perceptual decisions are accompanied by feelings of confidence that reflect the likelihood that the decision was correct
There has been a growing interest in the ability of human observers to estimate the validity of their perceptual decisions
There were three target performance conditions (70%, 85% and 90% correct) in which observers scored an average proportion correct [95% between-subjects CI] of 0.72 [±0.018]; 0.80 [±0.021]; and 0.82 [±0.023]. This corresponded to a Type-I sensitivity (d’) of 1.2 [±0.17], 1.7 [±0.14], and 1.9 [±0.19] in each target performance condition, which was found to significantly increase across target performance conditions using a Wilcoxon sign rank test; Z (70% vs. 85%) = 3.78, pbonf*2 < 0.001; Z (85% vs. 90%) = 2.35, pbonf*2 = 0.037, with these p-values Bonferroni corrected for two comparisons)
Summary
Perceptual decisions are accompanied by feelings of confidence that reflect the likelihood that the decision was correct. When observers were not permitted to control their exposure to evidence, they imposed covert bounds on their perceptual decisions but not on their confidence decisions This partial dissociation between decision processes is reflected in behaviour and pupil dilation. There has been a growing interest in the ability of human observers to estimate the validity of their perceptual decisions This form of metacognitive judgement can be obtained by asking an observer to rate how confident she is that one of her perceptual decisions is correct. Observers may integrate additional evidence into their Type-II decision that was not used for making their Type-I decision[8,16], allowing them to report errors in the absence of feedback[17,18,19], and to change their mind after the initiation of a response[20]. Exploring this possibility is essential for the understanding of confidence and perceptual decision-making
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