Departmental Colloquium - Dr. Bahador Bahrami (UCL) - A social interpretation of metacognition
Date:
Wednesday, May 14, 2014 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Title: A social interpretation of metacognition
Abstract: A long history of research is dedicated to how decision, reaction time and confidence are connected to one another in the context of perceptual/motor tasks. More recently, the same ideas have been extended to economic decision making. I will discuss the possibility that confidence in a decision is not just a consequence of perceptual evidence and economic gain/loss but in fact a means for social interaction among decision making agents. The fact that we often resolve disagreements by comparing how confident we are in our opinions demonstrates this point clearly. In my talk I will explore the social nature of decision confidence and discuss a few empirical and theoretical approaches we have taken to understand the cognitive and computational basis of collective decision making.