Assistant Professor of Psychology @TrentU
Cognitive development, confidence, collaboration
Research funded by SSHRC 🇨🇦
Carolyn Baer
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Second, an experimental design. Participants compared which of two answers had higher confidence, allowing us to test whether the *unit* of confidence was the same across memory and perception.
First, a correlational design. Memory for objects and perception of a shape's area were not inherently correlated, nor was participant's confidence sensitivity or efficiency. But how they *reported* on their confidence was correlated, both for adults and children aged 5-7.
Carolyn Baer
Inherent uncertainty therefore must be scaled into a domain-general unit (that could then facilitate both comparison and common reporting biases). But this seems to be something that emerges over development.
Next up is to understand how and why that happens!
Very relevant for those at @CDS2026 in Montreal right now!
For fellow dev MC researchers: some helpful correlational data + modelling with adult confidence reports to justify using RT as an implicit conf measure.
But note that while this corr is generally true in kids too, it's not perfect (West et al 2025; Leckey et al 2025)
Change #1: Going from domain-specific uncertainty inherent in our experience of the world to a domain-general unit of confidence that can be reported on with a variety of response formats.
We tested this with two designs:
Our experience of confidence feels similar across different decision types (like evaluating memory or current visual experience), but the literature suggests there is a lot more nuance in this.
We propose that this nuance is the result of *change* in metacognition. (In two ways!)
In exciting news, I'm rolling up to #CDS2026 recruiting a grad student for *this fall* thanks to 2 new grants!
My talks in the Metacognition preconference (AM session), and in the disagreement symposium (Fri first block) will preview the two main lines of work in my lab right now.
Carolyn Baer
This leads to change #2: this domain-general unit might emerge as children develop.
Adults could flexibly compare confidence across memory and perception, as could 6-7-year-olds.
But 4-5-year-olds could only compare confidence within a single task (e.g., memory vs memory).
New paper in @nathumbehav.nature.com with @simonag.bsky.social and Darko Odic!
We show that young children and adults use different internal signals for reporting memory versus perceptual confidence judgements. But by age six, the internal signals become comparable.
Free access link: rdcu.be/fgZvV
