Abstract
Our perceptions are accompanied by subjective confidence such as "definitely," "probably," and "possibly." Previous studies found that such confidence judgments do not depend solely on the accuracy of the perception. Here, we measured perceptual accuracy and confidence by manipulating the importance (precision) of the internal bodily signals or interoception to test whether the ongoing precision of interoception affects the confidence judgment. Specifically, 20 participants (eight males) performed a dot motion direction discrimination task. We manipulated relative precision between intero/exteroception by asking them to direct their attention to interoception (one's heartbeat) or exteroception (tone sound) before each trial in the task. The results showed that subjective confidence after heartbeat attention that would enhance the precision of interoception was more conservative than tone attention, whereas no between-condition differences in perceptual accuracy were found. These findings suggest that the bodily signals may jointly shape subjective confidence in the perception of the external world.
