title: Metacognitive sensitivity of subjective reports of decisional confidence and visual experience.
abstract: Previous studies provided contradicting results regarding metacognitive sensitivity estimated from subjective reports of confidence in comparison to subjective reports of visual experience. We investigated whether this effect of content of subjective reports is influenced by the statistical method to quantify metacognitive sensitivity. Comparing logistic regression and meta-d in a masked orientation task, a masked shape task, and a random-dot motion task, we observed metacognitive sensitivity of reports regarding decisional confidence was greater than of reports about visual experience irrespective of mathematical procedures. However, the relationship between subjective reports and the logistic transform of accuracy was often not linear, implying that logistic regression is not a consistent measure of metacognitive sensitivity. We argue that a science of consciousness would benefit from the assessment of both visual experience and decisional confidence, and recommend meta-d as measure of metacognitive sensitivity for future studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany; Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany. Electronic address: manuel.rausch@psy.lmu.de.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rausch
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany; School of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Hermann J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zehetleitner
mesh_terms: D003243:Consciousness; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D000067489:Metacognition; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D057566:Self Report; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: Confidence; Consciousness; Logistic regression; Meta-d; Signal detection theory; Subjective report; Type 2 signal detection theory; Visual awareness