TY - JOUR

T1 - Neural correlates of metacognitive ability and of feeling confident

T2 - A large-scale fMRI study

AU - Molenberghs, Pascal

AU - Trautwein, Fynn Mathis

AU - Böckler, Anne

AU - Singer, Tania

AU - Kanske, Philipp

N1 - Funding Information: T.S. as principal investigator, received funding for the ReSource Project from the European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/20072013/ ERC grant agreement no. 205557) and from the Max Planck Society. P.M. was supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Early Career Research Award (DE130100120), Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship (100458), and an ARC Discovery Grant (DP130100559).

PY - 2016/12

Y1 - 2016/12

N2 - One important aspect of metacognition is the ability to accurately evaluate one's performance. People vary widely in their metacognitive ability and in general are too confident when evaluating their performance. This often leads to poor decision making with potentially disastrous consequences. To further our understanding of the neural underpinnings of these processes, this fMRI study investigated inter-individual differences in metacognitive ability and effects of trial-by-trial variation in subjective feelings of confidence when making metacognitive assessments. Participants (N=308) evaluated their performance in a high-level social and cognitive reasoning task. The results showed that higher metacognitive accuracy was associated with a decrease in activation in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex, an area previously linked to metacognition on perception and memory. Moreover, the feeling of confidence about one's choices was associated with an increase of activation in reward, memory and motor related areas including bilateral striatum and hippocampus, while less confidence was associated with activation in areas linked with negative affect and uncertainty, including dorsomedial prefrontal and bilateral orbitofrontal cortex. This might indicate that positive affect is related to higher confidence thereby biasing metacognitive decisions towards overconfidence. In support, behavioural analyses revealed that increased confidence was associated with lower metacognitive accuracy.

AB - One important aspect of metacognition is the ability to accurately evaluate one's performance. People vary widely in their metacognitive ability and in general are too confident when evaluating their performance. This often leads to poor decision making with potentially disastrous consequences. To further our understanding of the neural underpinnings of these processes, this fMRI study investigated inter-individual differences in metacognitive ability and effects of trial-by-trial variation in subjective feelings of confidence when making metacognitive assessments. Participants (N=308) evaluated their performance in a high-level social and cognitive reasoning task. The results showed that higher metacognitive accuracy was associated with a decrease in activation in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex, an area previously linked to metacognition on perception and memory. Moreover, the feeling of confidence about one's choices was associated with an increase of activation in reward, memory and motor related areas including bilateral striatum and hippocampus, while less confidence was associated with activation in areas linked with negative affect and uncertainty, including dorsomedial prefrontal and bilateral orbitofrontal cortex. This might indicate that positive affect is related to higher confidence thereby biasing metacognitive decisions towards overconfidence. In support, behavioural analyses revealed that increased confidence was associated with lower metacognitive accuracy.

KW - Confidence

KW - Decision making

KW - FMRI

KW - Metacognition

KW - Social neuroscience

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85013114858&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1093/scan/nsw093

DO - 10.1093/scan/nsw093

M3 - Article

C2 - 27445213

AN - SCOPUS:85013114858

VL - 11

SP - 1942

EP - 1951

JO - Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

JF - Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

SN - 1749-5016

IS - 12

ER -