Meta_Mind · The workings of metacognition in decision-making

The workings of metacognition in decision-making

Decision-making is one of the most fundamental parts of our daily life. From the moment we wake up until we fall asleep we encounter a multitude of situations in which we have to select a course of action among several alternatives and foresee which decision is best. Based on previous experiences, we are able to predict upcoming events and internally test decision alternatives at the speed of light allowing us to adequately anticipate what comes next and what to do next. Undoubtedly, estimating the quality of our decisions (metacognition) is of crucial importance in many situations. For instance, when a doctor is not certain about the quality of a medical decision additional tests can be considered, or less consequential, when playing a drop shot in tennis the estimate of the quality of the shot determines where to go next. At the moment, the mechanisms underlying our so-called ‘metacognitive system’ are not well understood. It remains unclear how our metacognitive system operates or what kind of information is being used for metacognition. In addition, it currently also remains unknown how metacognition is affected by daily appearing factors such as drowsiness or sleepiness. The known fragmentation of cognition during drowsiness makes this transitional state an interesting test ground for decision-making and metacognition from both a psychological and neuroscientific perspective as well as from a practical point of view (e.g., until when are we still capable of controlling and knowing how we perform?). The overarching aim of the project is to expose the psychological and neural mechanisms of metacognition and decision-making, thereby intersecting the relationship between cognition, consciousness and wakefulness. I combine state-of-the-art methods from neuroscience and experimental designs from cognitive psychology and sleep research. More specifically, we asked the following questions. - How does forecasting and metacognition operate? What information is being incorporated and evaluated? What are the psychological and neural mechanisms? - How do daily fluctuations in cognitive performance induced by drowsiness affect decision-making and metacognition? What are the psychological and neural mechanisms? The answers to these questions could provide valuable input into understanding i) how decision-making can be improved (e.g., in clinical populations), and under what circumstances we should be cautious for overconfidence, ii) how daily fluctuations in alertness affect our decision process (how are we able to determine that we are too drowsy to drive, or how do we know that we can still make adept decisions at the end of a night shift in a hospital?). By combining modeling, the most innovative methods from electroencephalographic recordings (EEG), brain stimulation, fMRI analyses, and recent developments in sleep research I am investigating the psychological and neural mechanisms that underlie prediction and metacognition during decision-making and aim to lay out practical implications that will flow out of the research.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз