Abstract
Visual Working Memory (VWM) performance fluctuates from moment to moment with periodic failures. To test whether individuals are aware of upcoming failures, we developed a VWM bet task in which participants made a trial-by-trial prediction on VWM performance. Previously, we demonstrated that 1) individuals were unaware of upcoming VWM failures, and 2) it takes time for VWM performance to fully recover from failures. Interestingly, when informed of the failures through feedback, participants adjusted their following bets according to their recovering performance. Thus, in this study, we tested whether the metacognitive awareness of VWM performance recovery was induced by the feedback signaling the occurrence of a VWM failure. More precisely, in each trial, participants were first asked to place a bet on how many of four colored squares they would be able to remember. Then, they remembered the colored squares over a short retention interval and recalled each stimulus. When participants accurately recalled the same or a greater number of squares as their bets, they earned the points associated with their bets. To discourage overconfident bets, participants gained zero points when they recalled less than their bets. To discourage underconfident bets, participants were informed that the task would end as soon as they earned a pre-determined number of points (i.e., 60 points). Importantly, participants were not shown the points they earned during each trial. If feedback is necessary for participants to realize the occurrence of VWM failures and the subsequent slow recovery of VWM performance, they should not reduce their bets following the failures. Contrary to this prediction, we found that participants reduced their bets in accordance with the slow recovery of VWM performance. Our result, thus, demonstrates that individuals spontaneously recognize the occurrence of VWM failures and the subsequent slow recovery of VWM performance.