Consensus Goals in the Field of Visual Metacognition

Abstract

Despite the tangible progress in psychological and cognitive sciences over the last several years, these disciplines still trail other more mature sciences in identifying the most important questions that need to be solved. Reaching such consensus could lead to greater synergy across different laboratories, faster progress, and increased focus on solving important problems rather than pursuing isolated, niche efforts. Here, 26 researchers from the field of visual metacognition reached consensus on four long-term and two medium-term common goals. We describe the process that we followed, the goals themselves, and our plans for accomplishing these goals. If this effort proves successful within the next few years, such consensus building around common goals could be adopted more widely in psychological science.

Keywords: confidence; goals; perceptual decision making; visual metacognition.

Figure 1.. Consensus long- and medium-term goals.

The arrows indicate how the four long-term goals are related to each of the two medium-term goals. Long-term goal 4 is the only long-term goal that is not directly connected to either of the medium-term goals, though progress on these medium-term goals could have implications for long-term goal 4 too. The arrows are bidirectional to highlight the facts that (1) progress on the medium-term goals automatically results in progress for the long-term goals, and (2) the broader long-term goals have critical subcomponents represented by the medium-term goals.