Use info-seeking as an experimental instrument to study the interplay of decision making, metacognition and cognitive control¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 6 claims (6 for) · 1 study (1 causal), q3 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 6 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article recommends the info-seeking methodology as a research instrument: it writes that "the info-seeking methodology offers an interesting experimental instrument to study the interplay of decision making, metacog nition and cognitive control". In this paradigm, deciders choose between responding immediately and viewing an additional, easier continuation of the stimulus, so low-confidence trials can be identified behaviorally and their stimulus-response coupling examined with reverse correlation. The article frames info-seeking as combining metacognitive monitoring and metacognitive control, placing it at the intersection of metacognition and cognitive control research.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A primary decision task with titrated stimulus difficulty and an option to view additional, more informative stimulus material before responding

Constraints¶

• The article notes its demonstrated effects come from a numerical comparison task, and whether similar effects appear in random dot motion, luminance or face discrimination tasks is left to future work

Target Learners¶

• adult decision-makers in laboratory metacognition experiments

Target Learning Goals¶

• studying metacognitive monitoring and control during decision making

Affordances¶

• Unitary Confidence Mechanism Isomechanism

Claims¶

• Primary task accuracy is higher in the info-seeking condition than in the explicit reports and wagering conditions [+W]
• Low-confidence info-seeking trials show inverted decision weights, unlike explicit reports and post-decision wagering [+W]
• The inverted low-confidence info-seeking pattern persists when only each participant's first condition is analyzed [+W]
• Reverse-correlation decision weights are positive for the chosen stimulus dimension and weaker on low-confidence trials across confidence-assessment methods [+W]
• Internal error-corrections, not correct-to-incorrect changes-of-mind, produce the inverted low-confidence decision weights [+W]
• A single decision-and-confidence model with no condition-specific parameters fits decision weights across all three methods [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

-

Key Sources¶

• Lorenz Weise, Saskia D. Forster, Siegfried Gauggel. (2022). Reverse-correlation reveals internal error-corrections during information-seeking. Metacognition and Learning (2022) 17:321–335. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-021-09286-4