Research on metacognition—thinking about thinking—has grown rapidly and fostered our understanding of human cognition in healthy individuals and clinical populations. Of central importance is the concept of metacognitive performance, which characterizes the capacity of an individual to estimate and report the accuracy of primary (type 1) cognitive processes or actions ensuing from these processes. Arguably one of the biggest challenges for measures of metacognitive performance is their dependency on objective type 1 performance, although more recent methods aim to address this issue. The present work scrutinizes the most popular metacognitive performance measures in terms of two critical characteristics: independence of type 1 performance and test-retest reliability. Analyses of data from the Confidence Database (total N = 6912) indicate that no current metacognitive performance measure is independent of type 1 performance. The shape of this dependency is largely reproduced by extending current models of metacognition with a source of metacognitive noise. Moreover, the reliability of metacognitive performance measures is highly sensitive to the combination of type 1 performance and trial number. Importantly, trial numbers frequently employed in metacognition research are too low to achieve an acceptable level of test-retest reliability. Among common task characteristics, simultaneous choice and confidence reports most strongly improved reliability. Finally, general recommendations about design choices and analytical remedies for studies investigating metacognitive performance are provided.

中文翻译：

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测量元认知表现：第一类表现依赖和重测信度

元认知——思考思考——的研究发展迅速，促进了我们对健康个体和临床人群中人类认知的理解。最重要的是元认知表现的概念，它表征了个人估计和报告初级（1型）认知过程或这些过程所产生的行为的准确性的能力。可以说，衡量元认知表现的最大挑战之一是它们对客观类型 1 表现的依赖性，尽管最近的方法旨在解决这个问题。目前的工作根据两个关键特征仔细检查最流行的元认知性能测量：1 型性能的独立性和重测信度。来自信心数据库（总 N = 6912）的数据分析表明，当前没有任何元认知表现测量独立于 1 型表现。通过使用元认知噪声源扩展当前的元认知模型，很大程度上再现了这种依赖的形状。此外，元认知表现测量的可靠性对第一类表现和试验次数的组合高度敏感。重要的是，元认知研究中经常使用的试验数量太少，无法达到可接受的重测信度水平。在常见的任务特征中，同时选择和置信度报告最显着提高了可靠性。最后，提供了关于元认知表现研究的设计选择和分析补救措施的一般建议。