A Network Model for Multiple Choice: Accuracy and Response Times

Author(s):  
Richard M. Shiffrin
Author(s):  
Alan L. F. Lee ◽  
Vincent de Gardelle ◽  
Pascal Mamassian

AbstractVisual confidence is the observers’ estimate of their precision in one single perceptual decision. Ultimately, however, observers often need to judge their confidence over a task in general rather than merely on one single decision. Here, we measured the global confidence acquired across multiple perceptual decisions. Participants performed a dual task on two series of oriented stimuli. The perceptual task was an orientation-discrimination judgment. The metacognitive task was a global confidence judgment: observers chose the series for which they felt they had performed better in the perceptual task. We found that choice accuracy in global confidence judgments improved as the number of items in the series increased, regardless of whether the global confidence judgment was made before (prospective) or after (retrospective) the perceptual decisions. This result is evidence that global confidence judgment was based on an integration of confidence information across multiple perceptual decisions rather than on a single one. Furthermore, we found a tendency for global confidence choices to be influenced by response times, and more so for recent perceptual decisions than earlier ones in the series of stimuli. Using model comparison, we found that global confidence is well described as a combination of noisy estimates of sensory evidence and position-weighted response-time evidence. In summary, humans can integrate information across multiple decisions to estimate global confidence, but this integration is not optimal, in particular because of biases in the use of response-time information.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0257764
Author(s):  
Rosa Rugani ◽  
Lucia Regolin

Chicks trained to identify a target item in a sagittally-oriented series of identical items show a higher accuracy for the target on the left, rather than that on the right, at test when the series was rotated by 90°. Such bias seems to be due to a right hemispheric dominance in visuospatial tasks. Up to now, the bias was highlighted by looking at accuracy, the measure mostly used in non-human studies to detect spatial numerical association, SNA. In the present study, processing by each hemisphere was assessed by scoring three variables: accuracy, response times and direction of approach. Domestic chicks were tested under monocular vision conditions, as in the avian brain input to each eye is mostly processed by the contralateral hemisphere. Four-day-old chicks learnt to peck at the 4th element in a sagittal series of 10 identical elements. At test, when facing a series oriented fronto-parallel, birds confined their responses to the visible hemifield, with high accuracy for the 4th element. The first element in the series was also highly selected, suggesting an anchoring strategy to start the proto-counting at one end of the series. In the left monocular condition, chicks approached the series starting from the left, and in the right monocular condition, they started from the right. Both hemispheres appear to exploit the same strategy, scanning the series from the most lateral element in the clear hemifield. Remarkably, there was no effect in the response times: equal latency was scored for correct or incorrect and for left vs. right responses. Overall, these data indicate that the measures implying a direction of choice, accuracy and direction of approach, and not velocity, i.e., response times, can highlight SNA in this paradigm. We discuss the relevance of the selected measures to unveil SNA.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa van der Plas ◽  
David Mason ◽  
Lucy Anne Livingston ◽  
Jillian Craigie ◽  
Francesca Happé ◽  
...  

Do people have privileged and direct access to their own minds, or do we infer our own thoughts and feelings indirectly, as we would infer the mental states of others? In this study we shed light on this question by examining how mentalizing ability—the set of processes involved in understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings—relates to metacognitive efficiency—the ability to reflect on one’s own performance. In a general population sample (N = 477) we showed that mentalizing ability and self-reported socio-communicative skills are positively correlated with perceptual metacognitive efficiency, even after controlling for choice accuracy. By modelling the trial-by-trial formation of confidence we showed that mentalizing ability predicted the association between response times and confidence, suggesting those with better mentalizing ability were more sensitive to inferential cues to self-performance. In a second study we showed that both mentalizing and metacognitive efficiency were lower in autistic participants (N = 40) when compared with age, gender, IQ, and education-matched non-autistic participants. Together, our results suggest that the ability to understand other people’s minds predicts self-directed metacognition.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. F. Lee ◽  
Vincent de Gardelle ◽  
Pascal Mamassian

Visual confidence is the observers’ estimate of their precision in one single perceptual decision. Ultimately, however, observers often need to judge their confidence over a task in general rather than merely on one single decision. Here, we measured the global confidence acquired across multiple perceptual decisions. Participants performed a dual task on two series of oriented stimuli. The perceptual task was an orientation-discrimination judgment. The metacognitive task was a global confidence judgment: observers chose the series for which they felt they had performed better in the perceptual task. We found that choice accuracy in global confidence judgments improved as the number of items in the series increased, regardless of whether the global confidence judgment was made before (prospective) or after (retrospective) the perceptual decisions. This result is evidence that global confidence judgment was based on an integration of confidence information across multiple perceptual decisions rather than on a single one. Furthermore, we found a tendency for global confidence choices to be influenced by response times, and more so for recent perceptual decisions than earlier ones in the series of stimuli. Using model comparison, we found that global confidence is well described as a combination of noisy estimates of sensory evidence and position-weighted response-time evidence. In summary, humans can integrate information across multiple decisions to estimate global confidence, but this integration is not optimal, in particular because of biases in the use of response-time information.


Author(s):  
M.J. Kim ◽  
L.C. Liu ◽  
S.H. Risbud ◽  
R.W. Carpenter

When the size of a semiconductor is reduced by an appropriate materials processing technique to a dimension less than about twice the radius of an exciton in the bulk crystal, the band like structure of the semiconductor gives way to discrete molecular orbital electronic states. Clusters of semiconductors in a size regime lower than 2R {where R is the exciton Bohr radius; e.g. 3 nm for CdS and 7.3 nm for CdTe) are called Quantum Dots (QD) because they confine optically excited electron- hole pairs (excitons) in all three spatial dimensions. Structures based on QD are of great interest because of fast response times and non-linearity in optical switching applications.In this paper we report the first HREM analysis of the size and structure of CdTe and CdS QD formed by precipitation from a modified borosilicate glass matrix. The glass melts were quenched by pouring on brass plates, and then annealed to relieve internal stresses. QD precipitate particles were formed during subsequent "striking" heat treatments above the glass crystallization temperature, which was determined by differential thermal analysis.


The Analyst ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wanda V. Fernandez ◽  
Rocío T. Tosello ◽  
José L. Fernández

Gas diffusion electrodes based on nanoporous alumina membranes electrocatalyze hydrogen oxidation at high diffusion-limiting current densities with fast response times.


1982 ◽  
Vol 46 (8) ◽  
pp. 485-488
Author(s):  
R Kolstad ◽  
P Goaz ◽  
R Kolstad
Keyword(s):  

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