Visual awareness judgments are sensitive to accuracy feedback in stimulus discrimination tasks

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Consciousness Studies

Background:

• Perceptual awareness judgments are crucial for understanding conscious experience.
• The influence of performance feedback on awareness is not fully understood.
• Investigating the link between accuracy feedback and metacognitive judgments is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test if awareness judgments are sensitive to accuracy feedback.
• To examine the impact of previous trial accuracy on current awareness reports.
• To explore the role of performance monitoring in shaping conscious awareness.

Main Methods:

• A perceptual discrimination task was employed.
• Participants provided stimulus awareness judgments.
• Two conditions were used: No-feedback and Feedback (accuracy feedback after each trial).

Main Results:

• Awareness judgments were lower for incorrect versus correct discriminations across both conditions.
• Awareness was lower on trials following incorrect responses compared to correct ones.
• This effect was amplified in the Feedback condition, with post-error slowing observed in awareness ratings.

Conclusions:

• Visual awareness is influenced by both current and preceding response accuracy.
• Accuracy feedback enhances the impact of performance monitoring on awareness.
• Results support theories linking consciousness to performance monitoring mechanisms.