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Kinds of Access: Different Methods for Report Reveal Different Kinds of Metacognitive Access

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The Cognitive Neuroscience of Metacognition

Abstract

In experimental investigations of consciousness, participants are asked to reflect upon their own experiences by issuing reports about them in different ways. For this reason, a participant needs some access to the content of her own conscious experience in order to report. In such experiments, the reports typically consist of some variety of ratings of confidence or direct descriptions of one’s own experiences. Whereas different methods of reporting are typically used interchangeably, recent experiments indicate that different results are obtained with different kinds of reporting. We argue that there is not only a theoretical, but also an empirical difference between different methods of reporting. We hypothesise that differences in the sensitivity of different scales may reveal that different types of access are used to issue direct reports about experiences and metacognitive reports about the classification process.

This chapter is adapted from: Overgaard M, Sandberg K (2012) Kinds of access: Different methods for report reveal different kinds of metacognitive access. Phil Trans R Soc B 367:1287–1296

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Acknowledgments

Both authors were supported by European Research Council.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CCN, Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Kroghsttraede 3, 9220, Aalborg Oest, Aalborg, Denmark

    Morten Overgaard

  2. CNRU, Hammel Neurorehabilitation and Research Center, CFIN, MindLab, Aarhus University, Noerrebrogade 44, Build. 10G, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Morten Overgaard & Kristian Sandberg

Authors
  1. Morten Overgaard
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  2. Kristian Sandberg
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Correspondence to Morten Overgaard .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York, USA

    Stephen M. Fleming

  2. Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Christopher D. Frith

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Overgaard, M., Sandberg, K. (2014). Kinds of Access: Different Methods for Report Reveal Different Kinds of Metacognitive Access. In: Fleming, S., Frith, C. (eds) The Cognitive Neuroscience of Metacognition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45190-4_4

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