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Confidence and central tendency in perceptual judgment.

Yang Xiang1, Thomas Graeber2, Benjamin Enke3

  • 1Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA. yyx@mit.edu.

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Noisy cognition influences perceptual judgment, causing a central tendency effect. Lower subjective confidence predicts stronger biases and variability, supported by Bayesian models and experimental data.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive psychology
  • Computational neuroscience
  • Decision making

Background:

  • Perceptual judgments often exhibit a central tendency effect, biasing responses towards the mean of stimulus distributions.
  • Subjective confidence is a key metacognitive signal reflecting uncertainty in judgments.
  • Bayesian frameworks offer a formal approach to understanding perception and confidence.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of noisy cognition in perceptual judgment and the central tendency effect.
  • To theoretically and empirically link subjective confidence to central tendency and response variability.
  • To test predictions derived from a Bayesian model of perceptual judgment.

Main Methods:

  • Developed a formal Bayesian framework to model perceptual judgment and confidence.
  • Collected large-scale experimental data on perceptual judgments and confidence ratings.
  • Re-analyzed existing perceptual judgment datasets to validate theoretical predictions.

Main Results:

  • Subjective confidence significantly predicts the central tendency effect and response variability.
  • Lower confidence (higher uncertainty) correlates with increased bias towards the stimulus mean and higher response variability.
  • Findings hold true both correlationally and when sensory noise is experimentally manipulated.

Conclusions:

  • Noisy cognition, as reflected by subjective confidence, plays a crucial role in shaping perceptual judgments and the central tendency effect.
  • Results support Bayesian models of confidence and perception, offering insights into the mechanisms of judgment and decision-making.
  • The study provides empirical evidence for the relationship between metacognitive signals and perceptual biases.