Abstract
To which extent does visual spatial attention affect confidence judgment? Visual confidence refers to one's ability to estimate one's own performance in a considered task. As it relates to the second order representation of a primary decision, visual confidence might be considered as a form of metacognition. Hence, the ability of an observer to capture accurately her performance in a perceptual decision has been coined metacognitive sensitivity. Using an adapted version of a classic attentional paradigm, we investigated the effect of exogenous orienting of spatial attention on visual confidence and metacognitive sensitivity. Participants were instructed to fixate the center of a screen and to discriminate the orientation of a target consisting in a noisy 3-degrees Gabor patch displayed at 5-degrees eccentricity. Accuracy rates were titrated at the 75% threshold by adjusting target's SNR to each participant. To manipulate attention, the target was briefly presented •at either the left or right side of the fixation point, on the horizontal mid-line. Both possible target locations were surrounded by four black dots (0.3° diameter each, 3° from target's center), equally spaced around each of the two possible target display areas. Prior to target onset, the dots at one side of the fixation cross ("cued location") were flashed (67ms). After a variable cue-to-target onset asynchrony (CTOA), the target was displayed during 50ms either at cued location or the other location. Following each trial, participants were prompted to estimate their probability of being correct with a confidence rating scale. Results showed a significant correlation between accuracy in orientation discrimination and confidence judgments (p< 0.05). These results suggest that observers were able to take into account the cueing effect despite a notable variation in metacognitive sensitivity along different CTOAs.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017