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Published on: September 16, 2015
Cognitive training increases sensitivity to internal uncertainty during decision-making
Caleb Stone1,2, Jason B Mattingley1,3,4, Nathan J Evans3,5
1Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Queensland, Australia.
Journal of Neurophysiology
|July 22, 2026
Summary
Training improved metacognition by enhancing sensitivity to evidence accumulation, particularly in a free-choice decision-making scenario. This suggests metacognitive awareness can be trained to optimize decision quality.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Decision Science
Background:
- Metacognitive awareness of decision quality is crucial for adaptive decision-making.
- Sensitivity to internal evidence accumulation is a key marker of decision quality and a potential target for metacognitive training.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether training can enhance metacognitive awareness of decision quality by increasing sensitivity to evidence accumulation.
- To explore how different decision-making contexts (forced-choice vs. free-choice) influence the effects of metacognitive training.
Main Methods:
- Two groups of participants (N=34 each) underwent training to reproduce dot-motion direction.
- A free-choice group selected which stimulus to respond to, while a forced-choice group was instructed.
- Metacognitive judgments and a motion-discrimination task were assessed before and after training, alongside neural measures like centroparietal positivity (CPP) and drift rate.
Main Results:
- Both groups showed improved performance and metacognition post-training.
- Training enhanced sensitivity to pre-decisional CPP in the free-choice group and post-decisional CPP in the forced-choice group.
- Sensitivity to drift rate increased in the free-choice group but not the forced-choice group.
Conclusions:
- Training can improve metacognitive awareness and decision-making performance.
- The effects of metacognitive training on neural markers of evidence accumulation depend on the decision context.
- These findings offer insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms of training-induced metacognitive enhancements.
Keywords:
centro-parietal positivitycognitive trainingdecision-makingevidence accumulationmetacognitionMore Related Videos
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