title: Prior expectations facilitate metacognition for perceptual decision.
abstract: The influential framework of 'predictive processing' suggests that prior probabilistic expectations influence, or even constitute, perceptual contents. This notion is evidenced by the facilitation of low-level perceptual processing by expectations. However, whether expectations can facilitate high-level components of perception remains unclear. We addressed this question by considering the influence of expectations on perceptual metacognition. To isolate the effects of expectation from those of attention we used a novel factorial design: expectation was manipulated by changing the probability that a Gabor target would be presented; attention was manipulated by instructing participants to perform or ignore a concurrent visual search task. We found that, independently of attention, metacognition improved when yes/no responses were congruent with expectations of target presence/absence. Results were modeled under a novel Bayesian signal detection theoretic framework which integrates bottom-up signal propagation with top-down influences, to provide a unified description of the mechanisms underlying perceptual decision and metacognition.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9QH, UK; Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9QJ, UK. Electronic address: M.Sherman@Sussex.ac.uk.
authors.forename: M T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Sherman
authors.affiliation: Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9QJ, UK; Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9QJ, UK.
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Seth
authors.affiliation: Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9QJ, UK; Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9QJ, UK.
authors.forename: A B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Barrett
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9QH, UK; Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9QJ, UK.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kanai
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological; D001288:Attention; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D000067489:Metacognition; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention; Decision making; Expectation; Metacognition; Perceptual confidence