Metacognitive control of workflow enhances stimulus discriminability and reduces signal uncertainty

Prior research using attention-demanding tasks has shown that performance can be improved by allowing individuals to control the pacing of trials. This result suggests that people can monitor fluctuations of attention and can take advantage of this metacognitive awareness to synchronize moments with high demand to moments of heightened attention. In two experiments, we decomposed the benefits conferred by self-pacing within the context of a model of attentional capture rooted in signal detection theory. We employed a common orientation discrimination task in which set size varied across blocks of trials. Some subjects controlled the onset of each trial (self-pacing), and others did not. Model analyses revealed that self-pacing both increases target strength and decreases target variability. The between-trial wait times of self-pacing subjects supported the view that these benefits arise in part from the fact that participants appreciated the greater difficulty of larger set sizes and deployed a policy of waiting longer between trials during blocks with larger set sizes in order to offset the larger decrements associated with tasks of greater difficulty. Metacognitive control of self-pacing appears to benefit attention by enhancing the detectability of targets and by reducing the occurrence of target presentations during moments of lessened attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).