This vignette describes the parameterization of the meta-d’ model
used in the hmetad package. For an in-depth review, we
refer readers to (Maniscalco and Lau 2012, 2014).
Introduction
In metacognition research, decision-making is often categorized into two kinds.
The type 1 decision is the primary decision at hand, for example judging the orientation of a grating as left or right, or judging a word as either having been presented before (old) or not (new). In the context of the meta-d’ model, the type 1 decision is a binary decision task (i.e., either a yes-no decision task or a two-alternative forced choice task).
In contrast, the type 2 decision is the task of rating
confidence in the type 1 decision. The meta-d’ model is applicable where
the type 2 decision is categorical (i.e., confidence is rated on an
ordinal scale from 1 to K, where
1 indicates low confidence and K indicates
high confidence).
In line with the distinction between type 1 and type 2 decisions, the meta-d’ model is a conjunction of two models (one for each decision). Both models are based in Signal Detection Theory (SDT). However, the insight of the meta-d’ model is that the information available for type 2 decisions might differ from the information available for type 1 decisions.
Model for type 1 decisions
Under SDT, the observer is presented with a noisy signal depending on the underlying stimulus x_1 \sim \mathcal{D}_S(d') following a distribution \mathcal{D} dependent on a stimulus S \in \{0, 1\} and the observer’s sensitivity d'. Typically, \mathcal{D} is chosen to be an equal-variance normal distribution, such that
\mathcal{D}_0(d') = \mathcal{N}\left(-\frac{d'}{2}, 1\right) and \mathcal{D}_1(d') = \mathcal{N}\left(\frac{d'}{2}, 1\right)
However, this decision is not arbitrary and other options are available.
Given the noisy encoding x_1, the observer is tasked with determining the true value of S. To do so, they simply threshold x_1 such that their response is
R = [x_1 > c]
In this setup, the observer makes a correct response when R = S. More importantly, trials can be categorized into hits (S = 1 and R = 1), misses (S = 1 and R = 0), false alarms (FAs; S = 0 and R = 1), and correct rejections (CRs; S = 0 and R = 0). The generative model for type 1 decisions above implies the following response probabilities:
P(R=r \;\vert\; S=s) = \begin{cases} 1 - F_{\mathcal{D}_s(d')}\left(c\right) & \textrm{if } r=1 \\ F_{\mathcal{D}_s(d')}\left(c\right) & \textrm{if } r=0 \end{cases}
Model for type 2 decisions
In classical SDT, type 2 decisions are treated just like type 1 decisions but with more stringent or more liberal response criteria. However, this assumes that observers have access to the same information when making type 1 and type 2 decisions. Relaxing this assumption, the meta-d’ model assumes that type 2 decisions are derived from a separate decision variable:
x_2 \sim \begin{cases} \mathcal{D}_S^{(-\infty, \textrm{meta-}c]}\left(\textrm{meta-}d'\right) & \textrm{if } R=0 \\ \mathcal{D}_S^{[\textrm{meta-}c, \infty)}\left(\textrm{meta-}d'\right) & \textrm{if } R=1 \end{cases}
Importantly, this decision variable follows the same distribution as for the type 1 decision, with two differences. First, the distribution is truncated either above or below at the type 1 criterion \textrm{meta-}c depending on the initial type 1 response. This is so that the type 2 decision cannot contradict the type 1 decision (i.e., the meta-d’ model does not allow for changes of mind). Second, the sensitivity for the type 2 decision is \textrm{meta-}d' rather than d' to allow for task-level sensitivity and metacognitive sensitivity to differ.
Then, to determine the confidence level C \in \{ 1 \ldots K\}, the observer rates confidence using one of two sets of K-1 ordered confidence criteria (\textrm{meta-}c_2^0 or \textrm{meta-}c_2^1):
\begin{align*} C &= \begin{cases} 1+\Sigma_{k=1}^{K-1}[x_2 < \textrm{meta-}c_{2,k}^0] & \textrm{if } R=0 \\ 1+\Sigma_{k=1}^{K-1} [x_2 > \textrm{meta-}c_{2,k}^1] & \textrm{if } R=1 \end{cases} \end{align*}
This generative model implies that, conditional on the stimulus and the type 1 response, the type 2 response probabilities are
\begin{align*} P(C=c \;\vert\; R=r,S=s) &= \begin{cases} \frac{F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c\right) - F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c_{2,1}^0\right)} {F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c\right)} & \textrm{if } r=0, c=1 \\ \frac{F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c_{2,k}^0\right) - F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c_{2,k+1}^0\right)} {F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c\right)} & \textrm{if } r=0, 1 \le c \le K \\ \frac{F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c_{2,K}^0\right)} {F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c\right)} & \textrm{if } r=0, c = K \\ \frac{F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c_{2,1}^0\right) - F_{\mathcal{D}_s}\left(\textrm{meta-}c \right)} {1 - F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c\right)} & \textrm{if } r=1, c=1 \\ \frac{F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c_{2,k+1}^0\right) - F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c_{2,k}^0\right)} {1 - F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c\right)} & \textrm{if } r=1, 1 \le c \le K \\ \frac{1 - F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c_{2,K}^0 \right)} {1 - F_{\mathcal{D}_s(\textrm{meta-}d')}\left(\textrm{meta-}c\right)} & \textrm{if } r=1, c = K \end{cases} \end{align*}
In these formulas, the numerator is the probability that x_2 lies between successive confidence thresholds and the denominator is the probability of a type 1 response r given the type 2 parameters \textrm{meta-}d' and \textrm{meta-}c to account for the truncation of the type 2 signal distributions at \textrm{meta-}c.
Joint model for type 1 and type 2 decisions
Ultimately, we are interested in the joint type 1 and type 2 response probabilities for each stimulus. This can be conveniently decomposed into the type 1 response probability and the conditional type 2 response probability as follows:
P(R=r, C=c \;\vert\; S=s) = P(R=r \;\vert\; S=s) \; P(C=c \;\vert\; R=r, S=s)
Given the joint response probabilities for each stimulus, we can formulate the log likelihood of the meta-d’ in one of two ways. If trial-level effects are of interest, one can model individual trials using a categorical likelihood:
LL \;=\; \sum_n \textrm{categorical}\_\textrm{lpmf}\left(\textrm{joint}\_\textrm{response}(r_n,c_n) \;\vert\; P(R=r_n, C=c_n \;\vert\; S=s_n)\right)
However, this formulation requires the likelihood to be evaluated
once per trial, which for well-powered experiments can take a long time.
So, by default the hmetad package uses a multinomial
likelihood over the aggregated data. Where N_{s,r,c} is the number of trials with S=s, R=r,
and C=c:
\begin{align*} LL \;&=\; \textrm{multinomial}\_\textrm{lpmf}\left(N_{0,r,c} \;\vert\; P(R=r, C=c \;\vert\; S=0)\right) \\ &\;\quad+\; \textrm{multinomial}\_\textrm{lpmf}\left(N_{1,r,c} \;\vert\; P(R=r, C=c \;\vert\; S=1)\right) \end{align*}
This formulation only requires the model likelihood to be evaluated
twice (once per stimulus), dramatically increasing the efficiency of
model fitting. Because of the increase in efficiency, the multinomial
likelihood is the default in the hmetad package. If the
categorical likelihood is desired (e.g., for trial-level effects or
crossed random effects), it can be used with the argument
categorical=TRUE.
Fixing the type 1 threshold for type 2 responses
The meta-d’ model requires the parameter \textrm{meta-}c to be fixed to be equal with
respect to the type 1 criterion c. As
discussed by (Maniscalco and Lau 2014), there
are multiple ways of fixing \textrm{meta-}c. The hmetad
package implements two:
Under the fixed parameterization, \textrm{meta-}c = c. This parameterization is used as the default, since it was also used in the Hmeta-d toolbox (see also Fleming (2017)).
Alternatively, under the relative parameterization, \frac{\textrm{meta-}c}{\textrm{meta-}d'} = \frac{c}{d'}, which is achieved by setting \textrm{meta-}c = M c. This parameterization was used in (Maniscalco and Lau 2012, 2014).
To switch between these two parameterizations, the
fit_metad and sim_metad functions have an
argument metac_absolute which is TRUE by
default. To use the relative parameterization, simply set
metac_absolute=FALSE in your call to each function.
Model parameterization
To further increase the efficiency model fitting and help with
convergence, the hmetad parameterizes the meta-d’ model so
that all parameters are unconstrained variables (i.e., they fall in the
range (-\infty, \infty)). The
parameters for type 1 responses (d'
and c) are already unconstrained, so
they are estimated normally. However, the parameters for the type 2
parameters are bounded.
First, instead of fitting \textrm{meta-}d' directly, the
hmetad package models the M-ratio M =
\frac{\textrm{meta-}d'}{d'}. While this parameterization
helps regularize against strong differences between \textrm{meta-}d' and d', the M-ratio is still bounded by zero. So, the
hmetad package models the M-ratio on the logarithmic scale, i.e., \textrm{log }M =
\textrm{log}\frac{\textrm{meta-}d'}{d'}. In this
parameterization, one can compute \textrm{meta-}d' as \textrm{meta-}d' = e^{\textrm{log
}M}d'.
Second, the confidence criteria \textrm{meta-}c_{2,1:K}^0 and \textrm{meta-}c_{2,1:K}^1 each have two
constraints. Namely, \textrm{meta-}c_{2,1:K}^0 must be strictly
decreasing and less than \textrm{meta-}c, whereas \textrm{meta-}c_{2,1:K}^1 must be strictly
increasing and greater than \textrm{meta-}c. To deal with these
constraints, the hmetad package estimates the differences
between successive confidence criteria:
\textrm{dmeta-}c_{2,k}^0 = \begin{cases} \textrm{meta-}c - \textrm{meta-}c_{2,1}^0 & \textrm{if } k = 1 \\ \textrm{meta-}c_{2,k-1}^0 - \textrm{meta-}c_{2,k}^0 & \textrm{if } 2 \le k \le K \end{cases} \textrm{dmeta-}c_{2,k}^1 = \begin{cases} \textrm{meta-}c_{2,1}^0 - \textrm{meta-}c & \textrm{if } k = 1 \\ \textrm{meta-}c_{2,k}^1 - \textrm{meta-}c_{2,k-1}^1 & \textrm{if } 2 \le k \le K \end{cases}
Like for M-ratio, the differences
between successive confidence criteria are also modeled on the
logarithmic scale (parameters are named
metac2zero<k>diff and
metac2one<k>diff). Under this parameterization, the
confidence criteria can be computed as follows:
\begin{align*} \textrm{meta-}c_2^0 &= \textrm{meta-}c - \textrm{cumulative}\_\textrm{sum}\left(e^{\textrm{dmeta-}c_2^0}\right) \\ \textrm{meta-}c_2^1 &= \textrm{meta-}c + \textrm{cumulative}\_\textrm{sum}\left(e^{\textrm{dmeta-}c_2^1}\right) \end{align*}