Measuring Conscious Monitoring and Metacognition at the Start, Middle and End of a Reaching Movement

Poster Session D - Monday, April 15, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Gabriela Oancea^1,2, Craig S. Chapman^1,2; ¹University of Alberta, Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation, ²University of Alberta, Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute

Monitoring our arm position during goal-directed behaviour allows us to bring our limb to a target as accurately as possible. Despite our success in executing accurate movements, some work suggests that individuals have limited access to information about their limb position (Fourneret & Jeannerod, 1998). Contradictory evidence from metacognition research shows that when individuals are asked to rate their confidence after making judgements about their movements, they tend to give higher confidence ratings when they are correct, showing some capacity for self-monitoring (Arbuzova et al., 2021). Participants made reaching movements toward targets on a screen. They were then presented with two movement paths: their actual trajectory and a visually deviated version. We manipulated the location that the deviation was implemented (i.e., start, middle, or end of the path). Participants were asked to determine which trajectory was their own, followed by rating their confidence in their response. Overall, accuracy was lower than expected. Nevertheless, accuracy and confidence were higher when deviations occurred in the middle and end of the movement as opposed to the start, suggesting that participants were more aware of their true limb position at these locations. In addition, metacognitive sensitivity was greater during the middle and end implying that at these locations, individuals’ confidence ratings better discriminated between correct and incorrect responses. We conclude that people have a remarkable blindness to the properties of their own movements. As well, monitoring of a limb is significantly reduced at the start of a movement, possibly due to movement programming demands.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Motor control