Flexible mechanisms underlie the evaluation of visual confidence
Flexible mechanisms underlie the evaluation of visual confidence
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1007704107
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发表时间：
2010-11-30
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Mamassian, Pascal
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Barthelme, Simon;Mamassian, Pascal
视觉处理充满了不确定性：视觉系统必须尝试估计物理特性，尽管有丢失的信息和嘈杂的机制。有时，高度的视觉不确定性会转化为对我们的视觉感知缺乏信心：我们意识到自己看得不好。我们实现这种意识的机制-我们如何评估自己的视觉不确定性-是未知的，但它的调查是至关重要的，我们的视觉决策机制的理解。最简单的可能性是，视觉系统依赖于不确定性的线索，刺激特征通常与视觉不确定性有关，如模糊。大脑的概率模型提出了一种更复杂的机制，其中视觉不确定性被明确地表示为概率分布。在两个独立的实验中，观察员进行了视觉辨别任务，其中的信心可以确定的线索（对比度和拥挤或偏心和掩蔽）或他们的实际表现，后者需要一个更复杂的机制比线索监测。结果表明，观察者的信心跟随性能，而不是线索，表明视觉信心的评价机制是相对复杂的。这一结果支持概率模型，这意味着存在复杂的机制来评估不确定性。
Visual processing is fraught with uncertainty: The visual system must attempt to estimate physical properties despite missing information and noisy mechanisms. Sometimes high visual uncertainty translates into lack of confidence in our visual perception: We are aware of not seeing well. The mechanism by which we achieve this awareness-how we assess our own visual uncertainty-is unknown, but its investigation is critical to our understanding of visual decision mechanisms. The simplest possibility is that the visual system relies on cues to uncertainty, stimulus features usually associated with visual uncertainty, like blurriness. Probabilistic models of the brain suggest a more sophisticated mechanism, in which visual uncertainty is explicitly represented as probability distributions. In two separate experiments, observers performed a visual discrimination task in which confidence could be determined by the cues available (contrast and crowding or eccentricity and masking) or by their actual performance, the latter requiring a more sophisticated mechanism than cue monitoring. Results show that observers' confidence followed performance rather than cues, indicating that the mechanisms underlying the evaluation of visual confidence are relatively complex. This result supports probabilistic models, which imply the existence of sophisticated mechanisms for evaluating uncertainty.