Publications
You can also find my publications at my Google Scholar profile.
2025
Iconic versus working memory metacognition to evaluate the richness of perception: a registered report
In this registered report we compared metacognition in iconic memory and working memory. Although iconic memory showed higher capacity, metacognitive sensitivity was lower than in working memory—even when task performance was matched. These results suggest that iconic memory supports identification with information that is less consciously accessible than that held in working memory.
Comay, N. A., Solovey, G., & Barttfeld, P. (2025). Iconic versus working memory metacognition to evaluate the richness of perception: a registered report. Royal Society Open Science, 12(11), 231805.
Decisions are based on less information than metacognitive judgments in multialternative contexts
Often, dissociations between metacognition and decision accuracy take the form of metacognitive inefficiency—confidence being less informative than it could be. Conversely, in this study we found that in multialternative choices, the metacognitive system may be more robust than the decision system.
Comay, N. A., Solovey, G., & Barttfeld, P. (2025). Decisions are based on less information than metacognitive judgments in multialternative contexts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication.
Pre- and post-decision signals of certainty in changing minds
We made a commentary on Goueytes and colleagues article on the neural correlates of confidence and changes of mind in perceptual decision making.
Barttfeld, P., Comay, N., Embon, I., & Solovey, G. (2025). Pre- and post-decision signals of certainty in changing minds. Trends in Neurosciences.
Metacognitive sensitivity on the Iowa Gambling Task reveals awareness as a necessary condition for advantageous performance
The somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) proposes that bodily affective signals guide our decision-making advantageously independently of our awareness of which alternatives are better. Here, we used metacognitive sensitivity measures to quantify participants’ awareness during the Iowa Gambling Task and found that metacognition predicted performance across virtually all blocks of the task. These results suggest that awareness may play a more central role in advantageous decision-making than previously assumed by the SMH.
Zapata, J. M.+, Comay, N. A.+, Taricco, G., Barttfeld, P., Solovey, G., Saal, A., & Ahumada, J. V. (2024). Metacognitive sensitivity on the Iowa Gambling Task reveals awareness as a necessary condition for advantageous performance. Experimental Psychology, 71(6), 343–351. +joint first authors.
2023
The presence of irrelevant alternatives paradoxically increases confidence in perceptual decisions
The Bayesian confidence hypothesis states that confidence reflects the probability of being correct. If so, the presence of irrelevant, clearly incorrect alternatives should not affect confidence, as these options do not modify this probability. Contrary to normative predictions, we found that the presence of this kind of alternatives increased confidence, an effect which we capture with an alternative Bayesian model. These results highlight the need for more complex tasks involving multiple alternatives in order to achieve a thorough understanding of confidence computations.
Comay, N. A., Della Bella, G., Lamberti, P., Sigman, M., Solovey, G., & Barttfeld, P. (2023). The presence of irrelevant alternatives paradoxically increases confidence in perceptual decisions. Cognition, 234, 105377.