Just like a racecar driver’s lap times and pressure on the gas pedal can affect their confidence in winning, our study found that response times and peak force play a role in the formation of confidence judgments. We examined 65 healthy adults ranging from 20 to 76 years old who completed a four-choice task with confidence assessments. Interestingly, we discovered that faster responses were associated with higher confidence, but only when the responses were accurate. Similarly, participants expressed greater confidence when they used less force during incorrect trials. These associations between response parameters and confidence varied with age, as older participants showed a stronger link between response time and confidence, while the connection between response force and confidence weakened. Our findings suggest that these changes in the relationship between response dynamics and confidence may reflect age-related differences in performance monitoring or a decline in the ability to accurately compute confidence among older adults.

Accurate metacognitive judgments, such as forming a confidence judgment, are crucial for goal-directed behavior but decline with older age. Besides changes in the sensory processing of stimulus features, there might also be changes in the motoric aspects of giving responses that account for age-related changes in confidence. In order to assess the association between confidence and response parameters across the adult lifespan, we measured response times and peak forces in a four-choice flanker task with subsequent confidence judgments. In 65 healthy adults from 20 to 76 years of age, we showed divergent associations of each measure with confidence, depending on decision accuracy. Participants indicated higher confidence after faster responses in correct but not incorrect trials. They also indicated higher confidence after less forceful responses in errors but not in correct trials. Notably, these associations were age-dependent as the relationship between confidence and response time was more pronounced in older participants, while the relationship between confidence and response force decayed with age. Our results add to the notion that confidence is related to response parameters and demonstrate noteworthy changes in the observed associations across the adult lifespan. These changes potentially constitute an expression of general age-related deficits in performance monitoring or, alternatively, index a failing mechanism in the computation of confidence in older adults.

Read Full Article (External Site)