Oops, scratch that! Monitoring one's own errors during mental calculation

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Metacognition
• Numerical Cognition

Background:

• The feeling of error (FOE) is a subjective metacognitive experience indicating a potential mistake.
• Understanding the accuracy of FOE in mathematical tasks is crucial for metacognitive research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the accuracy of the feeling of error (FOE) in mental mathematical calculation.
• To investigate the factors influencing the occurrence of FOE and confidence judgments.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the number bisection task (NBT) to elicit FOE by asking participants to identify errors.
• Assessed FOE reports, arithmetic errors, and confidence levels in relation to task performance.

Main Results:

• FOE reports strongly correlated with actual arithmetic errors and numerical properties of the NBT.
• Task fluency and post-decision evaluation influenced FOE occurrence.
• Confidence judgments, even without conscious FOE, indicated implicit error detection.

Conclusions:

• The feeling of error (FOE) serves as a reliable metacognitive signal for evaluating mental calculation performance.
• Metacognitive feelings, including FOE and confidence, are influenced by processing fluency and post-decision evaluations.