Normative and informational confidence matching.

When performing tasks in a social context, individuals tend to report confidence judgments that increasingly align with those of others over time. However, the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, termed are not fully understood. This study explores two potential drivers of confidence matching behavior: informational factors that cause individuals to genuinely recalibrate their private sense of confidence based on their partner's confidence; and normative factors that lead individuals to adapt the way in which they publicly express their confidence, without changing their private assessment of their own performance.

Confidence regulates feedback processing during human probabilistic learning.

Uncertainty presents a key challenge when learning how best to act to attain a desired outcome. People can report uncertainty in the form of confidence judgments, but how such judgments contribute to learning and subsequent decisions remains unclear. In a series of three experiments employing an operant learning task, we tested the hypothesis that confidence plays a central role in learning by regulating resource allocation to the seeking and processing of feedback.

Preferences for advisor agreement and accuracy.

Previous research has shown that people are more influenced by advisors who are objectively more accurate, but also by advisors who tend to agree with their own initial opinions. The present experiments extend these ideas to consider people's choices of who they receive advice from-the process of source selection. Across a series of nine experiments, participants were first exposed to advisors who differed in objective accuracy, the likelihood of agreeing with the participants' judgments, or both, and then were given choice over who would advise them across a series of decisions.

Bayesian confidence in optimal decisions.

The optimal way to make decisions in many circumstances is to track the difference in evidence collected in favor of the options. The drift diffusion model (DDM) implements this approach and provides an excellent account of decisions and response times. However, existing DDM-based models of confidence exhibit certain deficits, and many theories of confidence have used alternative, nonoptimal models of decisions.

Confidence biases in problem gambling.

Background And Aims: Subjective confidence plays an important role in guiding behaviour, especially when objective feedback is unavailable. Systematic misjudgements in confidence can foster maladaptive behaviours and have been linked to various psychiatric disorders. In this study, we adopted a transdiagnostic approach to examine confidence biases in problem gamblers across three levels: local decision confidence, global task performance confidence, and overall self-esteem.

Give it a second try? The influence of feedback and performance in the decision of reattempting.

Feedback evaluation can affect behavioural continuation or discontinuation, and is essential for cognitive and motor skill learning. One critical factor that influences feedback evaluation is participants' internal estimation of self-performance. Previous research has shown that two event-related potential components, the Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN) and the P3, are related to feedback evaluation.

Alpha oscillations and stimulus-evoked activity dissociate metacognitive reports of attention, visibility, and confidence in a rapid visual detection task.

Variability in the detection and discrimination of weak visual stimuli has been linked to oscillatory neural activity. In particular, the amplitude of activity in the alpha-band (8-12 Hz) has been shown to impact the objective likelihood of stimulus detection, as well as measures of subjective visibility, attention, and decision confidence. Here we investigate how preparatory alpha in a cued pretarget interval influences performance and phenomenology, by recording simultaneous subjective measures of attention and confidence (experiment 1) or attention and visibility (experiment 2) on a trial-by-trial basis in a visual detection task.

Flexible use of confidence to guide advice requests.

Subjective confidence plays an important role in guiding behavior, for example, people typically commit to decisions immediately if high in confidence and seek additional information if not. The present study examines whether people are flexible in their use of confidence, such that the mapping between confidence and behavior is not fixed but can instead vary depending on the specific context. To investigate this proposal, we tested the hypothesis that the seemingly natural relationship between low confidence and requesting advice varies according to whether people know, or do not know, the quality of the advice.

Coproducing a library of videos to support families caring for children with gastrostomies: A mixed-methods evaluation with family carers and clinicians.

Introduction: Many families now perform specialist medical procedures at home. Families need appropriate training and support to do this. The aim of this study was to evaluate a library of videos, coproduced with parents and healthcare professionals, to support and educate families caring for a child with a gastrostomy.

Confidence, advice seeking and changes of mind in decision making.

Humans and other animals rely on social learning strategies to guide their behaviour, especially when the task is difficult and individual learning might be costly or ineffective. Recent models of individual and group decision-making suggest that subjective confidence judgments are a prime candidate in guiding the way people seek and integrate information from social sources. The present study investigates the way people choose and use advice as a function of the confidence in their decisions, using a perceptual decision task to carefully control the quality of participants' decisions and the advice provided.

Response-based outcome predictions and confidence regulate feedback processing and learning.

Influential theories emphasize the importance of predictions in learning: we learn from feedback to the extent that it is surprising, and thus conveys new information. Here, we explore the hypothesis that surprise depends not only on comparing current events to past experience, but also on online evaluation of performance via internal monitoring. Specifically, we propose that people leverage insights from response-based performance monitoring - outcome predictions and confidence - to control learning from feedback.

The effects of recursive communication dynamics on belief updating.

Many social interactions are characterized by dynamic interplay, such that individuals exert reciprocal influence over each other's behaviours and beliefs. The present study investigated how the dynamics of reciprocal influence affect individual beliefs in a social context, over and above the information communicated in an interaction. To this end, we developed a simple social decision-making paradigm in which two people are asked to make perceptual judgments while receiving information about each other's decisions.

Subjective confidence acts as an internal cost-benefit factor when choosing between tasks.

Upon making a decision, we typically have a sense of the likelihood that the decision we reached was a good one; that is, a degree of confidence in our choice. In a series of five experiments, we tested the hypothesis that confidence acts as an intrinsic cost-benefit factor when choosing between tasks, biasing people toward situations in which they experience higher confidence. Participants performed a task-selection paradigm in which they chose on each trial between two perceptual-judgment tasks that were matched for objective difficulty but differed in participants' experienced confidence, with confidence manipulated via differences in the strength of postdecisional evidence.

Dissociating expectancy-based and experience-based control in task switching.

The ability to switch tasks flexibly plays a critical role in goal-directed behavior. The present study tested the hypothesis that task switching is subject to higher-level "metacontrol" regulation that is reflected, for example, in contextual influences on switching efficiency, such as the global probability of task switches. This hypothesis was tested in 5 experiments using an instruction manipulation to dissociate expectancy-based control from experience-based practice effects: Participants' beliefs about switch probability were manipulated across trial sequences via explicit instruction, while objective frequency was matched for a subset of sequences.

FAST: A Novel, Executive Function-Based Approach to Cognitive Enhancement.

The present study introduces a novel cognitive intervention aimed at improving fluid intelligence (G), based on a framework we refer to as FAST: Flexible, Adaptive, Synergistic Training. FAST leverages a combination of novel game-based executive function (EF) training-designed specifically to enhance the likelihood of transfer-and transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), with aims to synergistically activate and strengthen mechanisms of cognitive control critical to G. To test our intervention, we collected three G measures from 113 participants [the advanced short Bochumer Matrizen-Test (BOMAT), Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM), and matrices similar to Raven's generated by Sandia labs], prior to and following one of three interventions: (1) the FAST + tRNS intervention, a combination of 30 min of daily training with our novel training game, Robot Factory, and 20 min of concurrent transcranial random noise stimulation applied to bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC); (2) an adaptively difficult Active Control intervention comprised of visuospatial tasks that specifically do not target G; or (3) a no-contact control condition.

Confidence Predictions Affect Performance Confidence and Neural Preparation in Perceptual Decision Making.

Decisions are usually accompanied by a feeling of being wrong or right - a subjective confidence estimate. But what information is this confidence estimate based on, and what is confidence used for? To answer these questions, research has largely focused on confidence regarding current or past decisions, for example identifying how characteristics of the stimulus affect confidence, how confidence can be used as an internally generated feedback signal, and how communicating confidence can affect group decisions. Here, we report two studies which implemented a novel metacognitive measure: predictions of confidence for future perceptual decisions.

A Postdecisional Neural Marker of Confidence Predicts Information-Seeking in Decision-Making.

Theoretical work predicts that decisions made with low confidence should lead to increased information-seeking. This is an adaptive strategy because it can increase the quality of a decision, and previous behavioral work has shown that decision-makers engage in such confidence-driven information-seeking. The present study aimed to characterize the neural markers that mediate the relationship between confidence and information-seeking.

Dynamic sources of evidence supporting confidence judgments and error detection.

Our decisions are accompanied by a subjective sense of confidence about whether the choices we have made are correct or erroneous. We investigate the information on which these confidence judgments are based, and how they relate to the decision itself, by studying how fluctuations in perceptual information influence decisions and second-order metacognitive evaluations of confidence and accuracy. Human participants judged which of two dynamically changing stimuli contained more dots, under instructions emphasizing either speed or accuracy.

Electrical stimulation of alpha oscillations stabilizes performance on visual attention tasks.

Neural oscillations in the alpha band (7-13 Hz) have long been associated with reductions in attention. However, recent studies have suggested a more nuanced perspective in which alpha oscillations also facilitate processes of cognitive control and perceptual stability. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) over occipitoparietal cortex at 10 Hz (alpha-tACS) can selectively enhance EEG alpha power.

Modulating fluid intelligence performance through combined cognitive training and brain stimulation.

It is debated whether cognitive training of specific executive functions leads to far transfer effects, such as improvements in fluid intelligence (Gf). Within this context, transcranial direct current stimulation and recently also novel protocols such as transcranial random noise and alternating current stimulation are being investigated with regards to their ability to enhance cognitive training outcomes. We compared the effects of four different transcranial electrical brain stimulation protocols in combination with nine daily computerized training sessions on Gf.

Subjective Confidence Predicts Information Seeking in Decision Making.

There is currently little direct evidence regarding the function of subjective confidence in decision making: The tight correlation between objective accuracy and subjective confidence makes it difficult to distinguish each variable's unique contribution. Here, we created conditions in a perceptual decision task that were matched in accuracy but differed in subjective evaluation of accuracy by orthogonally varying the strength versus variability of evidence. Confidence was reduced with variable (vs.

The Effects of 10 Hz Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation on Audiovisual Task Switching.

Neural oscillations in the alpha band (7-13 Hz) are commonly associated with disengagement of visual attention. However, recent studies have also associated alpha with processes of attentional control and stability. We addressed this issue in previous experiments by delivering transcranial alternating current stimulation at 10 Hz over posterior cortex during visual tasks (alpha tACS).

The many characters of visual alpha oscillations.

A central feature of human brain activity is the alpha rhythm: a 7-13 Hz oscillation observed most notably over occipitoparietal brain regions during periods of eyes-closed rest. Alpha oscillations covary with changes in visual processing and have been associated with a broad range of neurocognitive functions. In this article, we review these associations and suggest that alpha oscillations can be thought to exhibit at least five distinct 'characters': those of the inhibitor, perceiver, predictor, communicator and stabiliser.