| Abstract: | Two experiments examined the effect of rendering confidence judgments on the properties of the comparative decision process. In Exp 1, participants worked for 12 sessions that required 2-alternative perceptual, line-length comparisons. For sessions 1–4 and sessions 9–12, confidence judgments were not required. For sessions 5–8, participants provided confidence reports following each comparative judgment. The requirement of confidence judgments significantly increased decisional response time, suggesting that some confidence processing occurs in parallel with the primary decision process. Concomitantly, an examination of the properties of the time to determine confidence during sessions 5–8 revealed clear evidence of postdecisional confidence processing. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment requiring 2 alternative comparative judgments of Canadian city populations. The authors conclude that confidence processing occurs both during the decision process and postdecisionally, and discuss the implications of the present findings for current theories of confidence in human judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
