Search Results (3)

The ability of participants to monitor the correctness of their own decisions by rating their confidence is a form of metacognition. This introspective act is crucial for many aspects of cognition, including perception, memory, learning, emotion regulation, and social interaction. Researchers assess the quality of confidence ratings according to bias, sensitivity, and efficiency. To do so, they deploy quantities such as $meta-d’$-$d^{\prime }$ or the $M-ratio$ These measures compute the expected accuracy level of performance in the primary task (Type 1) from the secondary confidence rating task (Type 2). However, these measures have several limitations. For example, they are based on unwarranted parametric assumptions, and they fall short of accommodating the granularity of confidence ratings. Two recent papers by Dayan and by Fitousi have proposed information-theoretic measures of metacognitive efficiency that can address some of these problems. Dayan suggested $meta-\mathcal{I}$ and Fitousi proposed $meta-\mathcal{U}$, $meta-\mathcal{KL}$, and $meta-\mathcal{J}$. These authors demonstrated the convergence of their measures on the notion of metacognitive efficiency using simulations, but did not apply their measures to real empirical data. The present study set to test the construct validity of these measures in a concrete behavioral task—the face-matching task. The results supported the viability of these novel indexes of metacognitive efficiency, and provide substantial empirical evidence for their convergence. The results also adduce considerable evidence that participants in the face-matching task acquire valuable metaknowledge about the correctness of their own decisions in the task. Full article

People with schizophrenia-spectrum and bipolar disorders have difficulty accurately estimating their abilities and skills (impaired introspective accuracy [IA]) and tend to over- or underestimate their performance. This discrepancy between self-reported and objective task performance has been identified as a significant predictor of functional impairment. Yet, the factors driving this discrepancy are currently unclear. To date, the relationships between sleep quality and IA have not been examined. The current study aimed to explore the relationships between sleep quality and IA in participants diagnosed with schizophrenia (SCZ; n = 36), schizoaffective disorder (SCZ-A; n = 55), and bipolar disorder with psychotic features (BP; n = 87). Participants completed tasks of emotion recognition, estimated their performance on the tasks (used to calculate IA), and provided confidence ratings for their accuracy judgments. Participants also self-reported their sleep quality. These results suggest significantly greater discrepancies between self-reported and actual task scores for those with SCZ and SCZ-A compared to participants with BP. For those with SCZ, lower confidence on the tasks and underestimation of abilities were associated with lower sleep quality, while for those with SCZ-A, lower sleep quality was associated with higher confidence and overestimation of performance. Results suggest differential relationships between diagnostic groups. Future research is needed to further explore the factors driving these differing relationships, particularly the contrasting relationships between SCZ and SCZ-A. Full article

A major criticism social robots often face is that their integration in real social, human environments will dehumanize some of the roles currently being played by the human agents. This implicitly overestimates the social skills of the robots, which are constantly being upgraded, but which are still far from being able to overshadow humans. Moreover, it reflects loosely rational fears that robots may overcome humans in the near future. This paper points to a direction opposite to mainstream, and claims that robots can induce humanizing feelings in humans. In fact, current technological limitations can be managed to induce a perception of social fragility that may lead human agents to reason about the social condition of a robot. Though robot and/or technology phobias may bias the way a social robot is perceived, this reasoning process may contribute to an introspection on the meaning of being social and, potentially, to contribute to humanizing social environments. Full article