Postdecisional Processing Research Articles

Think twice: Re-assessing confidence improves visual metacognition

Metacognition is a fundamental feature of human behavior that has adaptive functional value. Current understanding of the factors that influence metacognition remains incomplete, and we lack protocols to improve metacognition. Here, we introduce a two-step confidence choice paradigm to test whether metacognitive performance may improve by asking subjects to reassess their initial confidence. Previous work on perceptual and mnemonic decision-making has shown that (type 1) perceptual sensitivity benefits from reassessing the primary choice, however, it is not clear whether such an effect occurs for type 2 confidence choices. To test this hypothesis, we ran two separate online experiments, in which participants completed a type 1 task followed by two consecutive confidence choices. The results of the two experiments indicated that metacognitive sensitivity improved after re-evaluation. Since post-decisional evidence accumulation following the first confidence choice is likely to be minimal, this metacognitive improvement is better accounted for by an attenuation of metacognitive noise during the process of confidence generation. Thus, here we argue that metacognitive noise may be filtered out by additional post-decisional processing, thereby improving metacognitive sensitivity. We discuss the ramifications of these findings for models of metacognition and for developing protocols to train and manipulate metacognitive processes.

Identifying cultural differences in metacognition.

Some aspects of human metacognition, such as the ability to consciously evaluate our beliefs and decisions, are hypothesized to be culturally acquired. However, direct evidence for this claim is lacking. As an initial step toward answering this question, here we examine differences in metacognitive performance between populations matched for occupation (students), income, demographics and general intelligence but drawn from 2 distinct cultural milieus (Beijing, China and London, U.K.). Chinese participants showed more efficient metacognitive evaluation of perceptual decision-making task performance compared to U.K. participants. These differences manifested in boosts to postdecisional processing following error trials, despite no differences in first-order performance. In a second experiment, we directly replicate these findings and show that a metacognitive advantage generalizes to a task that replaces postdecision evidence with equivalent social advice. Together, our results are consistent with a proposal that metacognitive capacity is shaped via sociocultural interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A theoretical and analytical framework to the inquiry of sustainable land management practices

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical and analytical framework by explaining the sustainable livelihoods framework and farming system model from a sustainable point of view. The author studied over 200 publications downloaded using the electronic database search of EBSCO through UNISA online library in June 2018. Keyword combinations of ‘land’, ‘tenure’ and ‘sustainable use’ were used to search for peer-reviewed journal articles published in English from January 1980 to May 2018. The article examines most relevant literature to consolidate the necessary theoretical and analytical foundation in analysing individual and group motivations towards sustainable land management practices. The literature review affirmed that a comprehensive theoretical and analytical framework is scant to empirically analyze the determinants of sustainable land management practices. To partially fill this knowledge gap, the paper provided a generic analytical framework that gives insight not only on pre-decisional processes, but also on post-decisional processes of continued and sustained use of conservation technologies. The analytical framework is developed by combining the sustainable livelihoods framework with the farming system model. It is concluded that the economic theory of property rights may not be adequate as a model to guide land tenure studies and policy. It is recommended that a holistic approach and comprehensive analytical framework is vital for research and development endeavours to ensure sustainable land management practices.

A theoretical and analytical framework to the inquiry of sustainable land management practices

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical and analytical framework by explaining the sustainable livelihoods framework and farming system model from a sustainable point of view. The author studied over 200 publications downloaded using the electronic database search of EBSCO through UNISA online library in June 2018. Keyword combinations of ‘land’, ‘tenure’ and ‘sustainable use’ were used to search for peer-reviewed journal articles published in English from January 1980 to May 2018. The article examines most relevant literature to consolidate the necessary theoretical and analytical foundation in analysing individual and group motivations towards sustainable land management practices. The literature review affirmed that a comprehensive theoretical and analytical framework is scant to empirically analyze the determinants of sustainable land management practices. To partially fill this knowledge gap, the paper provided a generic analytical framework that gives insight not only on pre-decisional processes, but also on post-decisional processes of continued and sustained use of conservation technologies. The analytical framework is developed by combining the sustainable livelihoods framework with the farming system model. It is concluded that the economic theory of property rights may not be adequate as a model to guide land tenure studies and policy. It is recommended that a holistic approach and comprehensive analytical framework is vital for research and development endeavours to ensure sustainable land management practices.

Physical Aggression Is Associated With More Effective Postdecisional Processing of Social Threat

Physically aggressive individuals are more likely to decide that others are threatening. Yet no research has examined how physically aggressive individuals’ social decisions unfold in real time. Seventy-five incarcerated men completed a task in which they identified the emotions in faces displaying anger (i.e., threat) and happiness (i.e., nonthreat) at low, moderate, or high ambiguity. Participants then rated their confidence in their decisions either immediately or after a delay, and changes in confidence provided an index of postdecisional processing. Physical aggression was associated with stronger differentiation of threatening and nonthreatening faces under moderate ambiguity. Moreover, physical aggression was associated with steeper decreases in confidence over time following decisions that threatening faces were nonthreatening, indicating more extensive postdecisional processing. This pattern of postdecisional processing mediated the association between physical aggression and angry rumination. Findings suggest a role for postdecisional processing in the maintenance of threat-based social decisions in physical aggression.

Confidence drives a neural confirmation bias

A prominent source of polarised and entrenched beliefs is confirmation bias, where evidence against one’s position is selectively disregarded. This effect is most starkly evident when opposing parties are highly confident in their decisions. Here we combine human magnetoencephalography (MEG) with behavioural and neural modelling to identify alterations in post-decisional processing that contribute to the phenomenon of confirmation bias. We show that holding high confidence in a decision leads to a striking modulation of post-decision neural processing, such that integration of confirmatory evidence is amplified while disconfirmatory evidence processing is abolished. We conclude that confidence shapes a selective neural gating for choice-consistent information, reducing the likelihood of changes of mind on the basis of new information. A central role for confidence in shaping the fidelity of evidence accumulation indicates that metacognitive interventions may help ameliorate this pervasive cognitive bias.

Neural Correlates of Working Memory Deficits in Different Adult Outcomes of ADHD: An Event-Related Potential Study.

BackgroundWe investigated working memory (WM) processing in a longitudinal sample of young adults with persistent and remittent childhood-onset ADHD to investigate the neural correlates of working memory with adult outcomes of ADHD.MethodsForty-seven young Chinese adults who had been diagnosed with ADHD during childhood underwent follow-up assessments for an average of 9 years. The ADHD sample consisted of 25 ADHD persisters (mean age =18.38 ± 0.5 years) and 22 remitters (mean age = 18.78 ± 1.10 years), who were compared with 25 sex ratio- and IQ-matched healthy adults (mean age = 19.60 ± 1.22 years) in a verbal n-back task.ResultsNo differences in behavioral measures were observed across the three groups. Compared with the healthy controls, the ADHD persisters and remitters had larger N1 amplitudes and smaller P2 amplitudes, while no significant differences between the persistence and remission groups were observed. The P3 amplitudes of the remission and control groups were higher than that of the persistence group, but there was no significant difference between the remitters and healthy controls.ConclusionThe P3 amplitudes reflecting postdecisional processing and/or WM updating were sensitive to ADHD remission, as they might improve concurrently with ADHD symptoms. These results indicate that the N1, P2, and P3 components of WM processing might be potential biomarkers for different ADHD outcomes.

Postdecisional Processing Delays in Metacognitive Monitoring After Traumatic Brain Injury.

To document the process by which metacognitive judgments ("online" monitoring of one's own cognitive performance during task completion) are made after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Sixteen community-dwelling adults with moderate to severe TBI and 16 matched healthy controls. Prospective, cross-sectional design. Metacognitive retrospective confidence judgments and reaction times were collected as participants performed a metamemory task. Adults with TBI did not differ from healthy peers in metacognitive accuracy; however, they took significantly longer to make retrospective confidence judgments. Retrospective confidence judgment reaction times were not consistently correlated to measures of processing speed in either sample. Adults with TBI engage in different postdecisional processes to make metacognitive judgments compared with healthy controls. Findings suggest that reaction times may be an important dimension of metacognition to assess clinically after TBI.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation of right inferior parietal cortex causally influences prefrontal activation for visual detection.

For effective interactions with the environment, the brain needs to form perceptual decisions based on noisy sensory evidence. Accumulating evidence suggests that perceptual decisions are formed by widespread interactions amongst sensory areas representing the noisy sensory evidence and fronto-parietal areas integrating the evidence into a decision variable that is compared to a decisional threshold. This concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-fMRI study applied 10Hz bursts of four TMS (or Sham) pulses to the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) to investigate the causal influence of IPS on the neural systems involved in perceptual decision-making. Participants had to detect visual signals at threshold intensity that were presented in their left lower visual field on 50% of the trials. Critically, we adjusted the signal strength such that participants failed to detect the visual stimulus on approximately 30% of the trials allowing us to categorise trials into hits, misses and correct rejections (CR). Our results show that IPS-relative to Sham-TMS attenuated activation increases for misses relative to CR in the left middle and superior frontal gyri. Critically, while IPS-TMS did not significantly affect participants' performance accuracy, it affected how observers adjusted their response times after making an error. We therefore suggest that activation increases in superior frontal gyri for misses relative to correct responses may not be critical for signal detection performance, but rather reflect post-decisional processing such as metacognitive monitoring of choice accuracy or decisional confidence.

Heading south with a north-up map: A choice processing analysis of map alignment effects

ABSTRACTThis study employed an information accumulation model of choice reaction times to investigate alignment effects in mental representations of maps. University students studied a map from a single orientation (with north at the top). In a subsequent two-choice reaction time task, the students’ spatial knowledge of the map was assessed employing spatial left/right judgments, which were made from imagined perspectives that were either north-aligned or south-aligned. Data showed a standard alignment effect, favoring north- over south-aligned trials. To examine the locus of this effect, data were fit using the Linear Ballistic Accumulator (LBA) model of speeded decisions (Brown & Heathcote, 2008). Of interest were three model parameters: drift rate, the speed at which evidence accumulates toward a response; response threshold, the amount of evidence demanded from the decision maker before selecting a response; and non-decision time, the time consumed by pre- and postdecisional processes. The best-fitting model suggested that non-decision time accounted for the alignment effect. The difference in non-decision time between north and south-aligned judgments suggests a mental alignment stage on south-aligned trials, accounting for the longer reaction times for judgements misaligned with the presented north orientation of the map.

Dynamics of postdecisional processing of confidence.

Most cognitive theories assume that confidence and choice happen simultaneously and are based on the same information. The 3 studies presented in this article instead show that confidence judgments can arise, at least in part, from a postdecisional evidence accumulation process. As a result of this process, increasing the time between making a choice and confidence judgment improves confidence resolution. This finding contradicts the notion that confidence judgments are biased by decision makers seeking confirmatory evidence. Further analysis reveals that the improved resolution is due to a reduction in confidence in incorrect responses, while confidence in correct responses remains relatively constant. These results are modeled with a sequential sampling process that allows evidence accumulation to continue after a choice is made and maps the amount of accumulated evidence onto a confidence rating. The cognitive modeling analysis reveals that the rate of evidence accumulation following a choice does slow relative to the rate preceding choice. The analysis also shows that the asymmetry between confidence in correct and incorrect choices is compatible with state-dependent decay in the accumulated evidence: Evidence consistent with the current state results in a deceleration of accumulated evidence and consequently evidence appears to have a decreasing impact on observed confidence. In contrast, evidence inconsistent with the current state results in an acceleration of accumulated evidence toward the opposite direction and consequently evidence appears to have an increasing impact on confidence. Taken together, this process-level understanding of confidence suggests a simple strategy for improving confidence accuracy: take a bit more time to make confidence judgments.

Dissociation between the impact of evidence on eye movement target choice and confidence judgements

It has been suggested that the evidence used to support a decision to move our eyes and the confidence we have in that decision are derived from a common source. Alternatively, confidence may be based on further post-decisional processes. In three experiments, we examined this. In Experiment 1, participants chose between two targets on the basis of varying levels of evidence (i.e., the direction of motion coherence in a random dot kinematogram). They indicated this choice by making a saccade to one of two targets and then indicated their confidence. Saccade trajectory deviation was taken as a measure of the inhibition of the non-selected target. We found that as evidence increased so did confidence and deviations of saccade trajectory away from the non-selected target. However, a correlational analysis suggested they were not related. In Experiment 2, an option to opt-out of the choice was offered on some trials if choice proved too difficult. In this way, we isolated trials on which confidence in target selection was high (i.e., when the option to opt-out was available but not taken). Again saccade trajectory deviations were found not to differ in relation to confidence. In Experiment 3, we directly manipulated confidence, such that participants had high or low task confidence. They showed no differences in saccade trajectory deviations. These results support post-decisional accounts of confidence: evidence supporting the decision to move the eyes is reflected in saccade control, but the confidence that we have in that choice is subject to further post-decisional processes.

Metacognition in human decision-making: confidence and error monitoring

People are capable of robust evaluations of their decisions: they are often aware of their mistakes even without explicit feedback, and report levels of confidence in their decisions that correlate with objective performance. These metacognitive abilities help people to avoid making the same mistakes twice, and to avoid overcommitting time or resources to decisions that are based on unreliable evidence. In this review, we consider progress in characterizing the neural and mechanistic basis of these related aspects of metacognition—confidence judgements and error monitoring—and identify crucial points of convergence between methods and theories in the two fields. This convergence suggests that common principles govern metacognitive judgements of confidence and accuracy; in particular, a shared reliance on post-decisional processing within the systems responsible for the initial decision. However, research in both fields has focused rather narrowly on simple, discrete decisions—reflecting the correspondingly restricted focus of current models of the decision process itself—raising doubts about the degree to which discovered principles will scale up to explain metacognitive evaluation of real-world decisions and actions that are fluid, temporally extended, and embedded in the broader context of evolving behavioural goals.

Decisions and revisions: The affective forecasting of changeable outcomes.

People prefer to make changeable decisions rather than unchangeable decisions because they do not realize that they may be more satisfied with the latter. Photography students believed that having the opportunity to change their minds about which prints to keep would not influence their liking of the prints. However, those who had the opportunity to change their minds liked their prints less than those who did not (Study 1). Although the opportunity to change their minds impaired the postdecisional processes that normally promote satisfaction (Study 2a), most participants wanted to have that opportunity (Study 2b). The results demonstrate that errors in affective forecasting can lead people to behave in ways that do not optimize their happiness and well-being.

Continuous-processing-related event-related potentials in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Visual information processing in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was studied using event-related potentials recorded during two versions of the Continuous Performance Task (CPT). ADHD children made more errors, and had longer reaction times than normal children on both the single- and dual-target CPT. Event-related potential waveforms were normal in the ADHD children with reference to early processing stages, i.e., contingent negative variation, P1-N1 laterality, and processing negativities, suggesting that ADHD children did not differ in their level of preparedness or their ability to mobilize resources for target identification and categorization. With respect to later processing, P3 amplitude was reduced in the ADHD group, whereas P3 latency was longer than normal. ADHD children had a diminished late frontal negative component, suggestive of reduced involvement in postdecisional processing.