STEP: On the Calibration of Knowledge and Perception (1995) [35043]

This article applies to:

E-Prime 3.0

E-Prime 1.0

 

Detail

Experiment Author Baranski, J.V & Petrusic W.M  Adapted from STEP and used with permission of Brian MacWhinney 

 

Experiment Description

This experiment compares performance on perceptual and knowledge tasks. The goal is to measure whether people expect their performance to be better than it is on either or both tasks. The original study concluded that performance was similar on both types of task.

 

The script presents a series of questions and a series of pictures, each with two possible answers. The participants are supposed to decide which of the answers is correct and then provide their confidence in their answer.

 

Experiment Instructions

This experiment has two counterbalanced trials. Each trial will present 32 samples. The knowledge-based list will select 32 questions randomly from a list of 156 total questions. The trial that tests perception confidence cycles randomly through a  list of 32 samples. There are images presented that are vital to the functioning of the experiment. These files are included in the download. 

 

Experiment Citation

"On the calibration of knowledge and perception". Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49, 397-407

 

Experiment Abstract or Original Experiment Abstract

This study examined confidence judgments (i.e., calibration, resolution, and over/underconfidence) and response times in an intellectual knowledge task and a perceptual task requiring location comparisons. At each of four levels of judgment difficulty (i.e. Easy, Hard, Impossible, and Misleading/Illusory), very similar properties were evident in the two tasks. The results are inconsistent with theories that assume a fundamentally different basis for confidence in human knowledge and perception.

 

Works Cited by the Study

Audley, R.J. (1960). A stochastic model for individual choice behaviour. Psychological Review, 67, 1-15.

 

Baranski, J.V. (1991). Theories of Confidence Calibration and experiments on the time to determine confidence. Doctoral dissertation, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

 

Baranski, J.V. & Petrusic, W.M. (1993). Comparing locations in the plane. Presented at the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science, Toronto, Ontario.

 

Baranski, J.V. & Petrusic, W.M. (1994). The calibration and resolution of confidence in perceptual judgments. Perception & Psychophysics, 55, 412-428.

 

Bjorkman, M., Juslin, P., & Winman, A. (1993). Realism of confidence in sensory discrimination: The underconfidence phenomenon. Perception & Psychophysics, 54, 75-81.

 

Dawes, R.M. (1980). Confidence in intellectual vs. confidence in perceptual judgments. In E.D. Lantermann & H. Feger (Eds.), Similarity and choice: Papers in honor of Clyde Coombs (pp. 327-345). Bern: Hans Huber.

Fechner, G.T. (1966/1860). Elements of Psychophysics. New York: Holt.

 

Ferrell, W.R. & McGoey, P.J. (1980). A model of calibration for subjective probabilities. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 26, 32-53.

 

Gigerenzer, G. Holfrage, U., & Kleinbolting, H. (1991). Probabilistic mental models: A Brunswikian theory of confidence. Psychological Review, 98, 506-528.

 

Griffin, D., & Tversky, A. (1992). The weighing of evidence and the determinants of confidence. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 411-435.

 

Henmon, V.A.C. (1911). The relation of the time of a judgment to its accuracy. Psychological Review, 18, 186-201.

 

Johnson, D.M. (1939). Confidence and speed in the two-category judgment. Archives of Psychology, 34, 1-53.

 

Keren, G. (1988). On the ability of monitoring non-veridical perceptions and uncertain knowledge: Some calibration studies. Acta Psychologica, 67, 95-119.

 

Keren, G. (1991). Calibration and probability judgments: Conceptual and methodological issues. Acta Psychologica, 77, 217-273.

 

Lichtenstein, S., & Fischoff, B. (1977). Do those who know more also know more about how much they know? The calibration of probability judgments. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 20, 159-183.

 

Link, S.W. (1992). The wave theory of difference and similarity. Hillsdale, Erlbaum.

 

McClelland, A.G.R. & Bolger, F. (1994). The calibration of subjective probabilities: Theories and models 1980-94. In G. Wright & P. Ayton (Eds.), Subjective Probability (pp. 453-482). Chichester: Wiley.

 

Murphy, A.H. (1973). A new vector partition of the probability score. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 12, 595-600.

 

Peirce, C.S. & Jastrow, J. (1884). On small differences of sensation. Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 3, 75-83.

 

Vickers, D. (1979). Decision processes in visual perception. New York: Academic Press.

 

Winman, A., & Juslin, P. (1993). Calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments: Two different accounts. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 34, 135-148.

 

Wright, G. (1984). Behavioural decision theory: An introduction. Middlesex: Penguin.

 

Wright, G., & Ayton, P. (1988). Decision time, subjective probability and task difficulty. Memory and Cognition, 16, 176-185.

 

Yaniv, I., Yates, J.F., & Smith, E.E. (1991). Measures of discrimination skill in probabilistic judgment. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 611-617.

 

See Also:

STEP: The Calibration and Resolution of Confidence in Perceptual Judgements (1994) [35037]