Resilience of Perceptual Metacognition in a Dual-Task Paradigm

When people do multiple tasks at the same time, it is often found that their performance is worse relative to when they do those same tasks in isolation. However, one aspect that has received little empirical attention, is whether the ability to monitor and evaluate one’s task performance is also affected by multitasking. How does dual-tasking affect metacognition and its relation to performance? We investigated this question through the use of a visual dual-task paradigm with confidence judgments. Participants categorized both the color and the motion direction of moving dots, and then rated their confidence in both responses. Across four experiments, participants (N=87) exhibited a clear dual-task cost at the perceptual level, while no cost at the metacognitive level. We discuss this resilience of metacognition to multitasking costs, and examine how our results fit onto current models of perceptual metacognition.