Calibration of sensory and cognitive judgments: Two different accounts

Abstract
The purpose of this study was to test predictions of two recent theories of realism of confidence. Ecological approaches to realism of confidence in one's general knowledge (Gigerenzer et al., 1991; Juslin, in press a; Björkman, in press) predict good calibration or, in the case of poor cognitive adjustment, overconfidence, within the cognitive domain. The subjective distance theory of confidence in sensory discriminations (Björkman et al., 1992) predicts a pervasive underconfidence bias for sensory discriminations. Empirical data are reported showing that: (a) Calibration for sensory judgments is considerably poorer than calibration for well adapted cognitive judgements, a difference that can be entirely traced to underconfidence in the sensory domain. (b) While an initial overconfidence bias in the cognitive domain is removed by outcome feedback, the bias observed in sensory discriminations is unaffected even by a prolonged feedback session. It is suggested that the nature of confidence in sensory discriminations is different from the nature of confidence in cognitive judgments.

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