When do we know that we do not know? An Examination of Metacognitive Processes in Visual Working Memory

This work investigates how people make judgements about the content of their visual working memory (VWM). Some studies on long-term memory suggest that people base those metacognitive judgements on the outcome of a retrieval attempt. In contrast, Son and Metcalfe (2005) observed that people identify poorly remembered items immediately, presumably by the lack of familiarity for the retrieval cue. We tested these two hypotheses in the context of metacognition in VWM. In Experiment 1-3, we investigated participants’ response behavior in a color reproduction task with a hidden color wheel, which partially externalizes the search for the intended response. We assumed that instant awareness of the inability to retrieve an information would be reflected in selecting the first, random color, rather than search for a particular color in the wheel. Although participants provided a substantial number of low-confidence responses, results of an adapted mixture modelling analysis yielded little evidence for quick guesses. In contrast, participants consistently searched for a color (even with unfamiliar retrieval cues in Experiment 2), and only quickly guessed when being cued with objects at test that were not previously presented (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, we tested whether the order of color reproduction and confidence judgements influences reaction times (RTs) for these tasks. We observed shorter RTs for whichever response was given second, as would be expected if reproduction and confidence judgments shared a retrieval attempt. We conclude that people usually engage in retrieval attempts for providing judgements about their VWM, even when information is poorly remembered.