Confidence ratings do not distinguish imagination from reality

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Metacognition
• Perception

Background:

• Perceptual reality monitoring is crucial for distinguishing internally generated imagination from external reality.
• Failures in reality monitoring can occur at perceptual or cognitive levels, impacting judgment.
• Previous work identified errors in attributing imagined signals to perception during wakefulness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate metacognitive insight into perceptual reality monitoring errors.
• To determine if confidence ratings can differentiate between perceived reality and imagination.
• To explore the origin of reality monitoring failures (perceptual vs. decisional).

Main Methods:

• Utilized a perceptual detection task with imagined signals.
• Measured perceptual confidence alongside decisions to assess metacognitive insight.
• Employed hierarchical Bayesian modeling of confidence criteria.

Main Results:

• Confidence criteria shifted in parallel with decision criteria, indicating metacognitive reality monitoring failures.
• Reality monitoring failures were attributed to perceptual, not decisional, processes.
• Global, task-level insight was observed but uncorrelated with trial-level insight from confidence ratings.

Conclusions:

• Confidence ratings are insufficient for distinguishing imagination from reality in perceptual detection tasks.
• Metacognitive insight into reality monitoring errors is limited, even when global awareness exists.
• Future research should explore diverse cognitive dimensions of insight into reality judgments.