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Published on: August 10, 2014
Response duration tracks confidence
Hanbei Zhou1,2, Rui Zhe Goh1,2, Ian Phillips1,2
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218.
Summary
Response duration, not just initiation time, predicts confidence. Longer response durations indicate lower confidence across various cognitive tasks, offering new insights into decision-making processes.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Response timing is a key indicator of cognitive processing.
- Response initiation time is a traditional measure, but response duration is less explored.
- Understanding how different aspects of response timing relate to cognitive states is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether response duration predicts subjective confidence independently of response initiation time.
- To explore the role of response duration in perceptual and higher-cognitive tasks.
- To determine if response duration offers unique insights into cognitive processing.
Main Methods:
- Three preregistered experiments were conducted.
- Tasks included face detection, motion coherence judgment, and trivia answering.
- Response initiation time and response duration were measured alongside subjective confidence ratings.
Main Results:
- Response duration reliably predicted subjective confidence across all tasks.
- Longer response durations were associated with lower reported confidence.
- Response duration explained variance in confidence not accounted for by response initiation time.
Conclusions:
- Response duration provides independent information about cognitive processing and confidence.
- Response duration is a valuable, readily available measure to complement traditional response time analysis.
- This finding advances the understanding of decision-making and metacognition.
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