Psychology and Neuroscience of Cognition Unit, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.
National Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS), Brussels, Belgium.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2024 May;77(5):1113-1124. doi: 10.1177/17470218231191516. Epub 2023 Aug 10.
It is well established that negative emotions influence a range of cognitive processes. How these emotions influence the metacognitive judgement individuals make about their own performance and whether this influence is similar depending on the conditions under which metacognition is assessed, however, is far less understood. The primary aim of this study was to determine whether exposure to emotional stimuli could influence metacognitive judgements made under short or long time constraints. A total sample of 144 young adults (aged 18-35 years) was recruited and asked to complete an arithmetic strategy selection task under emotional or neutral condition. Following each strategy selection trial, participants also provided a retrospective confidence judgement (RCJ). Both strategy selection and RCJ were collected under short or long time constraints (1,500 vs. 2,500 ms for strategy selection and 800 vs. 1,500 ms for RCJ). In addition to replicating previous findings showing lower rates of better strategy selection under negative emotions compared with neutral condition, an effect of negative stimuli on the accuracy of participants' confidence judgements was found, but only if participants had a short time limit to make their second-level evaluation. Such findings are consistent with the hypothesis that exposure to emotional stimuli disturbs early, but not late metacognitive processes and have important implications to further our understanding of the role of emotions on metacognition.
负面情绪会影响一系列认知过程，这一点已得到充分证实。然而，这些情绪如何影响个体对自身表现的元认知判断，以及这种影响是否因元认知评估的条件而异，人们的了解还远远不够。本研究的主要目的是确定情绪刺激的暴露是否会影响在短时间或长时间限制下做出的元认知判断。共招募了 144 名年轻成年人（年龄在 18-35 岁之间），并要求他们在情绪或中性条件下完成一项算术策略选择任务。在每次策略选择试验后，参与者还提供了回溯性置信判断（RCJ）。策略选择和 RCJ 都是在短时间或长时间限制下（策略选择的 1,500 与 2,500 毫秒，RCJ 的 800 与 1,500 毫秒）收集的。除了复制先前的发现，即在负面情绪下，与中性条件相比，更好的策略选择率较低之外，还发现负面刺激对参与者信心判断的准确性有影响，但前提是参与者在做出第二级评估时有较短的时间限制。这些发现与以下假设一致，即情绪刺激会干扰早期但不是晚期的元认知过程，这对进一步了解情绪对元认知的作用具有重要意义。
