Collaborative Metacognition in Signal Detection Decision Making

Abstract

When individuals work together to make decisions in a signal detection task, they typically achieve greater sensitivity as a group than they could each achieve on their own. The present experiments investigate whether metacognitive, or Type 2, signal detection judgements would show a similar pattern of collaborative benefit. Thirty-two participants in Experiment 1 and sixty participants in Experiment 2 completed a signal detection task individually and in groups, and measures of Type 1 and Type 2 sensitivity were calculated from participants’ confidence judgments. Bayesian parameter estimates suggested that regardless of whether teams are given feedback on their performance (Experiment 1) or receive no feedback (Experiment 2), no credible differences were observed in metacognitive efficiency between the teams and the better members, nor between the teams and the worse members. These findings suggest that teams may self-assess their performance by deferring metacognitive judgments to the most metacognitively sensitive individual within the team, even without trial-by-trial feedback, rather than integrating their judgments and achieving increased metacognitive awareness of their own performance.