There are things that we know that we know, and there are things that we do not know we do not know: Confidence in decision-making.
Metacognition, the ability to think about our own thoughts, is a fundamental component of our mental life and is involved in memory, learning, planning and decision-making. Here we focus on one aspect of metacognition, namely confidence in perceptual decisions. We review the literature in psychophysics, neuropsychology and neuroscience. Although still a very new field, several recent studies suggest there are specific brain circuits devoted to monitoring and reporting confidence, whereas others suggest that confidence information is encoded within decision-making circuits. We provide suggestions, based on interdisciplinary research, to disentangle these disparate results.
Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neurobiology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; The Semel Institute for Neuroscience, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; The Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Electronic address: pcgrimaldi@ucla.edu.
Piercesare
P
Grimaldi
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; The Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Hakwan
H
Lau
Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neurobiology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; The Semel Institute for Neuroscience, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; The Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Michele A
MA
Basso
D000818:Animals; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009488:Neurosciences; D011584:Psychology; D011601:Psychophysics; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*
Awareness; Confidence; Consciousness; Metacognition; Monitoring