Keywords

Metacognition, False feedback, Visual working memory, Confidence, Accuracy, Performance

Abstract

Accepting false feedback may lead to performance decreases and skewed confidence. Identifying who is more susceptible to false feedback can help us understand how to prevent performance declines and overconfidence. We believe that individuals with low metacognition may be more susceptible to blindly accepting false feedback because they often rely on external sources of feedback for self-evaluation, whereas high metacognitive individuals may be protected because they often rely on accurate internal judgements for self-evaluation. Feedback is important for successful task execution; it can highlight errors (negative feedback) or successful behaviors (positive feedback) to guide future behavior. Individuals with higher metacognition possess high monitoring accuracy and efficient self-regulation skills, often resulting in higher task performance. This study examined whether receiving false external feedback decreased accuracy and confidence more for individuals with low metacognition relative to those with high metacognition in a VWM task. Participants completed a VWM change detection task and reported their trial-by-trial confidence in their response accuracy. Half of the participants received accurate feedback, while the other half received incorrect feedback on 1 of every 5 (~17-20%) correct responses. Receiving false feedback decreased confidence on correct and incorrect trials, but individuals with high metacognition showed a larger decline than those with lower metacognition. False feedback also slightly lower overall accuracy, but again individuals with higher metacognition experienced a larger drop in accuracy than those with lower metacognition. This suggests that people with high metacognition are more receptive to feedback and do not dismiss external feedback when it doesn’t align with their internal feedback.

Thesis Completion Year

2026

Thesis Completion Semester

Spring

Thesis Chair

Joseph Schmidt

College

College of Sciences

Department

Psychology

Thesis Discipline

Psychology

Language

English

Access Status

Open Access

Length of Campus Access

None

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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