Decision making
Is our ability to judge our own minds general or task-specific?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
An individual's ability to accurately evaluate their own performance is largely shared across different mental tasks, supporting a domain-general metacognitive ability.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Four cognitive domains with trial-by-trial confidence; cross-task metacognitive correlations
- N
- N=181 · Young adults; 40 trials per task
- Population
- Young adults recruited at Grenoble-Alpes University
- Outcome
- Cross-domain covariance in metacognitive efficiency and confidence
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Key findings
The researchers found that both confidence levels and metacognitive efficiency correlated significantly across almost all tasks. Specifically, five of the six correlation pairings for metacognitive efficiency did not overlap with zero in their statistical models, indicating a shared cognitive resource for self-evaluation. Depending on the tasks compared, this general metacognitive ability explained between 7% and 48% of the variance in how accurately participants judged their own decisions. Only the relationship between episodic memory and visual perception failed to show a clear correlation, with an estimated correlation of 0.28.
Methodology
The researchers recruited 181 young adults to test whether metacognition operates as a single, general process or depends on the specific type of task being performed. Each participant completed four cognitive tasks—episodic memory, semantic memory, executive functioning, and visual perception—consisting of 40 trials each. After every trial, participants rated their confidence in their answer on a scale from 0% to 100%, allowing researchers to calculate both their overall confidence bias and their metacognitive efficiency.
Limitations
Although the study supports a general metacognitive process, it cannot determine whether this shared resource can be trained to improve performance across different fields. Furthermore, because each of the tasks only featured 40 trials, there was higher statistical uncertainty when calculating individual performance measures. Finally, the correlational nature of the design means we cannot conclude whether a single brain region or multiple interconnected systems drive this shared ability across different domains.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Metacognitive self-evaluation is partially domain-general, meaning an individual's ability to monitor their performance correlates across visual perception and memory tasks.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Studies disagree on the strength of the relationship between visual perception and memory metacognition: one study observed a robust cross-task correlation of 0.60, whereas another found no significant correlation specifically between episodic memory and visual perception.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Metacognitive abilities appear to be largely domain-general, as an individual's self-evaluation accuracy and confidence ratings are significantly correlated across different types of mental tasks.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Metacognitive efficiency exhibits domain-general properties, meaning that an individual's ability to evaluate their own decisions is significantly correlated across different mental tasks such as memory and perception.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Open questions
Tensions this paper is part of
From concept pages' “where studies disagree.” Disagreement means the same question; scope means different assays, populations, or outcomes.
Studies disagree on the strength of the relationship between visual perception and memory metacognition: one study observed a robust cross-task correlation of 0.60, whereas another found no significant correlation specifically between episodic memory and visual perception.
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.