Metacognition in the audiovisual McGurk illusion: perceptual and causal confidence. 2023

David Meijer, and Uta Noppeney
Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics Centre, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK.

Almost all decisions in everyday life rely on multiple sensory inputs that can come from common or independent causes. These situations invoke perceptual uncertainty about environmental properties and the signals' causal structure. Using the audiovisual McGurk illusion, this study investigated how observers formed perceptual and causal confidence judgements in information integration tasks under causal uncertainty. Observers were presented with spoken syllables, their corresponding articulatory lip movements or their congruent and McGurk combinations (e.g. auditory B/P with visual G/K). Observers reported their perceived auditory syllable, the causal structure and confidence for each judgement. Observers were more accurate and confident on congruent than unisensory trials. Their perceptual and causal confidence were tightly related over trials as predicted by the interactive nature of perceptual and causal inference. Further, observers assigned comparable perceptual and causal confidence to veridical 'G/K' percepts on audiovisual congruent trials and their causal and perceptual metamers on McGurk trials (i.e. illusory 'G/K' percepts). Thus, observers metacognitively evaluate the integrated audiovisual percept with limited access to the conflicting unisensory stimulus components on McGurk trials. Collectively, our results suggest that observers form meaningful perceptual and causal confidence judgements about multisensory scenes that are qualitatively consistent with principles of Bayesian causal inference. This article is part of the theme issue 'Decision and control processes in multisensory perception'.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D007088 Illusions The misinterpretation of a real external, sensory experience. Autokinetic Effect,Autokinetic Illusions,Effect, Autokinetic,Illusions, Auditory,Illusions, Kinesthetic,Illusions, Tactile,Illusions, Visual,Auditory Illusion,Auditory Illusions,Autokinetic Effects,Autokinetic Illusion,Effects, Autokinetic,Illusion,Illusion, Auditory,Illusion, Autokinetic,Illusion, Kinesthetic,Illusion, Tactile,Illusion, Visual,Illusions, Autokinetic,Kinesthetic Illusion,Kinesthetic Illusions,Tactile Illusion,Tactile Illusions,Visual Illusion,Visual Illusions
D010775 Photic Stimulation Investigative technique commonly used during ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY in which a series of bright light flashes or visual patterns are used to elicit brain activity. Stimulation, Photic,Visual Stimulation,Photic Stimulations,Stimulation, Visual,Stimulations, Photic,Stimulations, Visual,Visual Stimulations
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D000067489 Metacognition Awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes. Meta-cognition,Meta-cognitive Awareness,Meta-cognitive Control,Meta-cognitive Monitoring,Meta-emotion,Meta-memory,Metacognitive Awareness,Metacognitive Control,Metacognitive Knowledge,Metacognitive Monitoring,Metaemotion,Metamemory,Awareness, Meta-cognitive,Awareness, Metacognitive,Knowledge, Metacognitive,Meta cognition,Meta cognitive Awareness,Meta cognitive Control,Meta cognitive Monitoring,Meta emotion,Meta memory,Meta-cognitive Awarenesses,Meta-cognitive Controls,Meta-cognitive Monitorings,Meta-memories,Metacognitive Awarenesses,Metacognitive Controls,Metacognitive Knowledges,Metaemotions,Metamemories,Monitoring, Metacognitive
D000161 Acoustic Stimulation Use of sound to elicit a response in the nervous system. Auditory Stimulation,Stimulation, Acoustic,Stimulation, Auditory
D001307 Auditory Perception The process whereby auditory stimuli are selected, organized, and interpreted by the organism. Auditory Processing,Perception, Auditory,Processing, Auditory
D001499 Bayes Theorem A theorem in probability theory named for Thomas Bayes (1702-1761). In epidemiology, it is used to obtain the probability of disease in a group of people with some characteristic on the basis of the overall rate of that disease and of the likelihood of that characteristic in healthy and diseased individuals. The most familiar application is in clinical decision analysis where it is used for estimating the probability of a particular diagnosis given the appearance of some symptoms or test result. Bayesian Analysis,Bayesian Estimation,Bayesian Forecast,Bayesian Method,Bayesian Prediction,Analysis, Bayesian,Bayesian Approach,Approach, Bayesian,Approachs, Bayesian,Bayesian Approachs,Estimation, Bayesian,Forecast, Bayesian,Method, Bayesian,Prediction, Bayesian,Theorem, Bayes
D013067 Speech Perception The process whereby an utterance is decoded into a representation in terms of linguistic units (sequences of phonetic segments which combine to form lexical and grammatical morphemes). Speech Discrimination,Discrimination, Speech,Perception, Speech
D014796 Visual Perception The selecting and organizing of visual stimuli based on the individual's past experience. Visual Processing,Perception, Visual,Processing, Visual

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