The Impact of Feedback on Perceptual Decision-Making and Metacognition: Reduction in Bias but No Change in Sensitivity
通过两个大规模实验（总N=518），发现反馈不影响知觉和元认知敏感性，但能减少反应偏差并改善信心校准，表明反馈通过策略调整而非直接强化起作用。
It is widely believed that feedback improves behavior, but the mechanisms behind this improvement remain unclear. Different theories postulate that feedback has either a direct effect on performance through automatic reinforcement mechanisms or only an indirect effect mediated by a deliberate change in strategy. To adjudicate between these competing accounts, we performed two large experiments on human adults (total N = 518); approximately half the participants received trial-by-trial feedback on a perceptual task, whereas the other half did not receive any feedback. We found that feedback had no effect on either perceptual or metacognitive sensitivity even after 7 days of training. On the other hand, feedback significantly affected participants’ response strategies by reducing response bias and improving confidence calibration. These results suggest that the beneficial effects of feedback stem from allowing people to adjust their strategies for performing the task and not from direct reinforcement mechanisms, at least in the domain of perception.