Measuring Metacognition of Direct and Indirect Parameters of Voluntary Movement

We can make exquisitely precise movements without the apparent need for conscious monitoring. But can we monitor the low-level movement parameters when prompted? And what are the mechanismsthat allow us to monitor our movements? To answer these questions, we designed a semivirtual ballthrowing task. On each trial, participants first threw a virtual ball by moving their arm (with or withoutvisual feedback, or replayed from a previous trial) and then made a two-alternative forced choice on theresulting ball trajectory. They then rated their confidence in their decision. We measured metacognitiveefficiency using meta-d0/d0 and compared it between different informational domains of the first-ordertask (motor, visuomotor or visual information alone), as well as between two different versions of thetask based on different parameters of the movement: proximal (position of the arm) or distal (resultingtrajectory of the ball thrown). We found that participants were able to monitor their performance basedon distal motor information as well as when proximal information was available. Their metacognitiveefficiency was also equally high in conditions with different sources of information available. The analysisof correlations across participants revealed an unexpected result: While metacognitive efficiencycorrelated between informational domains (which would indicate domain-generality of metacognition),it did not correlate across the different parameters of movement.