Introspection confidence predicts EEG decoding of self-generated thoughts and meta-awareness.

Abstract

The neurophysiological bases of mind wandering (MW)—an experiential state wherein attention is disengaged from the external environment in favour of internal thoughts—and state meta‐awareness are poorly understood. In parallel, the relationship between introspection confidence in experiential state judgements and neural representations remains unclear. Here, we recorded EEG while participants completed a listening task within which they made experiential state judgements and rated their confidence. Alpha power was reliably greater during MW episodes, with unaware MW further associated with greater delta and theta power. Multivariate pattern classification analysis revealed that MW and meta‐awareness can be decoded from the distribution of power in these three frequency bands. Critically, we show that individual decoding accuracies positively correlate with introspection confidence. Our results reaffirm the role of alpha oscillations in MW, implicate lower frequencies in meta‐awareness, and are consistent with the proposal that introspection confidence indexes neurophysiological discriminability of representational states.