Understanding intra- and interindividual variation in human metacognition

• Applicant: Dr. Matthias Guggenmos
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 550113793

Metacognition is the ability to reflect on one's thoughts and actions. Although it has been identified as an important psychological factor in various domains of life, it remains poorly understood, both in terms of its intra- and interindividual variation. A major reason that has undermined progress in metacognition research are severe methodological issues concerning its central paradigm, the study of human confidence. Recently, new computational models of confidence have emerged that begin to address these issues and provide the opportunity to meaningfully quantify different facets of metacognition, such as overconfidence and metacognitive ability. The present proposal makes a case that these models are not only able to provide a more accurate account of confidence computations within an individual, but also a better understanding of why different individuals often vary so much in their metacognitive characteristics. To this aim, the proposal outlines a research programme in two parts. The first part involves a proposal for a new computational model involving an implicit and explicit metacognitive bias parameter that will be validated against empirical choice and confidence reports (behavioral experiments) and neural signatures of metacognitive processes (EEG experiment). The second part of the research programme will investigate interindividual variation in metacognition through the lens of personality. Specifically, personality factors of the HEXACO model will be related to metacognitive parameters provided by computational modeling. Together, these two lines of research will improve our understanding of how humans compute subjective estimates of confidence and why this ability differs between individuals.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants