Prior expectations facilitate metacognition for perceptual decision.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Perception Science
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• Predictive processing theory posits that expectations shape perception.
• Evidence supports expectation's role in low-level perception.
• The influence of expectations on high-level perception, like metacognition, is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether expectations influence perceptual metacognition.
• To differentiate the effects of expectation from attention on metacognition.

Main Methods:

• A novel factorial design manipulated expectation (target probability) and attention (concurrent task).
• Participants performed a yes/no task on Gabor targets.
• A Bayesian signal detection framework modeled the results.

Main Results:

• Metacognition improved when responses aligned with expectations, independent of attention.
• Expectations facilitated accurate self-assessment of perception.

Conclusions:

• Expectations significantly enhance perceptual metacognition, demonstrating top-down influence on high-level perception.
• A unified Bayesian framework can explain perceptual decision-making and metacognition.