Abstract It is becoming widely appreciated that higher stimulus sensitivity trivially increases estimates of metacognitive sensitivity. Therefore, meaningful comparisons of metacognitive ability across conditions and observers necessitates equating stimulus sensitivity. To achieve this, one common approach is to use a continuous staircase that runs throughout the duration of the experiment under the assumption that this procedure has no influence on the estimated metacognitive ability. Here we critically examine this assumption. Using previously published data, we find that, compared to using a single level of stimulus contrast, staircase techniques lead to inflated estimates of metacognitive ability across a wide variety of measures including area under the type 2 ROC curve, the confidence-accuracy correlation phi, meta-d′, meta-d′/d′, and meta-d′–d′. Furthermore, this metacognitive inflation correlates with the degree of stimulus variability experienced by each subject. These results suggest that studies using a staircase approach are likely to report inflated estimates of metacognitive ability. Furthermore, we argue that similar inflation likely occurs in the presence of variability in task difficulty caused by other factors such as fluctuations in alertness or gradual improvement on the task. We offer practical solutions to these issues, both in the design and analysis of metacognition experiments.

中文翻译：

---

实验程序如何影响对元认知能力的估计

摘要越来越多的人意识到，较高的刺激敏感性会稍微增加对元认知敏感性的估计。因此，跨条件和观察者之间的元认知能力的有意义的比较需要等同于刺激敏感性。为了实现这一目标，一种常见的方法是使用连续的阶梯，该阶梯在实验的整个过程中运行，并假定此过程对估计的元认知能力没有影响。在这里，我们批判性地检验这个假设。使用以前发布的数据，我们发现，与使用单一级别的刺激对比相比，阶梯技术导致在包括2型ROC曲线下的面积，置信度-准确度相关性phi， meta-d'，meta-d'/ d'，和meta-d'–d'。此外，这种元认知膨胀与每个受试者经历的刺激变化程度相关。这些结果表明，使用阶梯法进行的研究可能会报告元认知能力的过高估计。此外，我们认为类似的通货膨胀很可能是由于其他因素（如机敏性的波动或任务的逐步改进）引起的任务难度的变化而发生的。我们在元认知实验的设计和分析中为这些问题提供了实用的解决方案。我们认为，类似的通货膨胀很可能是由于其他因素（如机敏性的波动或任务的逐步改进）引起的任务难度的变化而发生的。我们在元认知实验的设计和分析中为这些问题提供了实用的解决方案。我们认为，类似的通货膨胀很可能是由于其他因素（如机敏性的波动或任务的逐步改进）引起的任务难度的变化而发生的。我们在元认知实验的设计和分析中为这些问题提供了实用的解决方案。