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Updated: Jul 9, 2025
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Multimodal Protocol for Assessing Metacognition and Self-Regulation in Adults with Learning Difficulties
Published on: September 27, 2020
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Common computations for metacognition and meta-metacognition.
Yunxuan Zheng1, Samuel Recht2, Dobromir Rahnev1
1School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, United States.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
|December 4, 2023
Summary
People can evaluate their confidence in decisions (metacognition) and their confidence in that confidence (meta-metacognition). This study shows meta-metacognitive judgments are made by the same cognitive system, without additional cost.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Decision Science
Background:
- Metacognition, or the ability to reflect on one's own cognitive states, is crucial for decision-making.
- Recent research suggests a meta-metacognitive ability exists to evaluate metacognitive judgments.
- It remains unclear if meta-metacognition involves a distinct neural system or computational processes separate from basic metacognition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether meta-metacognitive judgments (Type-3) are computed by a separate system from metacognitive judgments (Type-2).
- To compare the computational cost and characteristics of Type-2 and Type-3 evaluations in a perceptual decision-making task.
Main Methods:
- Participants (N=36) performed a perceptual decision task, providing Type-1 (stimulus identification), Type-2 (confidence), and Type-3 (confidence in confidence) responses.
- A control condition involved only Type-1 and Type-2 responses on a 4-point scale.
- Behavioral data were analyzed to compare the properties of binary Type-2/Type-3 responses with a graded Type-2 response.
Main Results:
- Strong evidence for meta-metacognitive ability (Type-3 responses) was observed.
- Combining binary Type-2 and Type-3 responses yielded results equivalent to a 4-point Type-2 response.
- Type-3 judgments were made without incurring additional metacognitive noise, unlike Type-2 evaluations.
Conclusions:
- The findings suggest that metacognition and meta-metacognition likely arise from a single, flexible cognitive system.
- This system can recursively adapt to generate both confidence judgments and evaluations of those judgments.
- No distinct computational system for meta-metacognition is necessary in perceptual decision-making.
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