Bits of Confidence: Metacognition as Uncertainty Reduction

The ability of humans to assess the correctness of their own decisions via confidence
judgments is a form of metacognition. This self-reflective act is essential for learning,
memory, consciousness, group decision, and many other aspects of cognition. Researchers
evaluate the quality of metacognition according to bias, sensitivity and efficiency. These
are often measured with such quantities as meta - d’, or M-ratio by inferring the potential
accuracy of the primary task from the secondary confidence rating performance. In the
present study, I offer a comprehensive account of confidence judgments and
metacognition, in terms of a communication system between stimuli, actor, rater, and
experimenter. Several information theory techniques are harnessed to uncover the
underlying components of information transmission between stimuli, actor and rater.
Within this framework, I advance three independent measures of metacognitive
sensitivity: meta − U, meta − KL, and meta − J . These are based on multivariate
uncertainty analysis, and applications of the Kullback-Leibler and Jeffrey’s divergences to
confidence-accuracy distributions. I then demonstrate the various desirable
characteristics of these information-theory measures, and provide considerable evidence
for their construct validity. In addition, I outline the structural and individual sources of
metacognitive inefficiency, according to an information-theory model of communication.
Keywords: Metacognition, Confidence, Information-theory, meta-d’, M-ratio, meta - I

人类评估自身决策正确性的能力，即通过自信度判断进行的元认知，是一种认知的高级形式。这种自我反思的行为对于学习、记忆、意识、群体决策以及认知的诸多方面均至关重要。研究者们根据偏差、敏感度和效率等指标来评估元认知的质量。这些指标通常通过从次要的自信度评级性能中推断出主要任务的潜在准确性来衡量，如元- d’或 M-ratio。在本研究中，我提供了一种关于自信度判断和元认知的全面论述，这涉及了刺激物、行动者、评判者和实验者之间的通信系统。利用多种信息论技术来揭示刺激物、行动者和评判者之间信息传递的潜在成分。在此框架下，我提出了三个独立的元认知敏感度度量指标：元-U、元-KL 和元-J。这些指标基于多元不确定性分析，并应用了 Kullback-Leibler 和 Jeffrey 的散度到自信度-准确性分布。接着，我展示了这些信息论指标的各种理想特性，并提供了大量关于其结构效度的证据。此外，根据通信的信息论模型，我还概述了元认知低效的结构和个体来源。关键词：元认知、自信度、信息论、元- d’、M-ratio、元-I