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Prior expectations facilitate metacognition for perceptual decision

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 22:08 authored by Maxine ShermanMaxine Sherman, Anil SethAnil Seth, Adam BarrettAdam Barrett, R Kanai
The influential framework of ‘predictive processing’ suggests that prior probabilistic expectations influence, or even constitute, perceptual contents. This notion is evidenced by the facilitation of low-level perceptual processing by expectations. However, whether expectations can facilitate high-level components of perception remains unclear. We addressed this question by considering the influence of expectations on perceptual metacognition. To isolate the effects of expectation from those of attention we used a novel factorial design: expectation was manipulated by changing the probability that a Gabor target would be presented; attention was manipulated by instructing participants to perform or ignore a concurrent visual search task. We found that, independently of attention, metacognition improved when yes/no responses were congruent with expectations of target presence/absence. Results were modeled under a novel Bayesian signal detection theoretic framework which integrates bottom-up signal propagation with top-down influences, to provide a unified description of the mechanisms underlying perceptual decision and metacognition.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Consciousness and Cognition

ISSN

1053-8100

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

35

Page range

53-65

Department affiliated with

  • Informatics Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2015-08-18

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