Metacognitive confidence: A neuroscience approach

Abstract Metacognition refers to thinking about our own thinking and implies a distinction between primary and secondary cognition. This article reviews how neuroscience has dealt with this distinction between first and second-order cognition, with special focus on meta-cognitive confidence. Meta-cognitive confidence is important because it affects whether people use their primary cognitions in guiding judgments and behaviors. The research described in this review is organized around the type of primary thoughts for which people have confidence, including judgments about memory, choices, and evaluative judgments. Along with other areas, prefrontal cortex and parietal regions have been consistently associated with judgments of meta-cognitive confidence in these three domains. Although metacognitive confidence might be associated with particular brain activity in most of the studies reviewed, confidence often seems to be confounded with other potentially important dimensions, such as effort and ease. Given that people tend to be less certain in tasks that are more difficult, more research is needed to examine the brain activity specifically linked to confidence.