Alpha oscillations and stimulus-evoked activity dissociate metacognitive reports of attention, visibility, and confidence in a rapid visual detection task

Davidson, Matthew J.; Macdonald, James S. P.; Yeung, Nick

Abstract

Variability in the detection and discrimination of weak visual stimuli has been linked to oscillatory neural activity. In particular, the amplitude of activity in the alpha-band (8–12 Hz) has been shown to impact the objective likelihood of stimulus detection, as well as measures of subjective visibility, attention, and decision confidence. Here we investigate how preparatory alpha in a cued pretarget interval influences performance and phenomenology, by recording simultaneous subjective measures of attention and confidence (experiment 1) or attention and visibility (experiment 2) on a trial-by-trial basis in a visual detection task. Across both experiments, alpha amplitude was negatively and linearly correlated with the intensity of subjective attention. In contrast with this linear relationship, we observed a quadratic relationship between the strength of alpha oscillations and subjective ratings of confidence and visibility.We find that this same quadratic relationship links alpha amplitude with the strength of stimulus-evoked responses. Visibility and confidence judgments also corresponded with the strength of evoked responses, but confidence, uniquely, incorporated information about attentional state. As such, our findings reveal distinct psychological and neural correlates of metacognitive judgments of attentional state, stimulus visibility, and decision confidence when these judgments are preceded by a cued target interval.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 24, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Sep 27, 2022
• Publication Date: Sep 27, 2022
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 6, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Vision
• Electronic ISSN: 1534-7362
• Publisher: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 20
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.22.10.20
• Keywords: Sensory Systems, Ophthalmology
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10019878
• Publisher URL: https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2783680
• Related Public URLs: Data and code availability: All raw data and analysis code have been uploaded to a repository on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/j2cah/).