Using confidence for cognitive optimisation (post-doc)

When making decisions, we experience a sense of confidence in the accuracy of this decision. I am interested in how we use this sense of confidence for cognitive optimisation (e.g., maximizing gains while minimizing costs). Inspired by Bayesian accounts, our working hypothesis is that beliefs about which we are highly certain (i.e., in which we have high confidence) are more resistant to change than beliefs about which we are uncertain (i.e., in which we have low confidence). Using a mixture of neuroimaging recordings (MEG/EEG), pupil recordings, and model-based analysis of behavioural data, I aim to reveal the cognitive and neural architecture of how confidence influences cognitive optimisation.

The role of metacognition in cognitive control (PhD work)

In my PhD work, I examined the role of metacognition in cognitive control. To accomplish this, I used the method of subliminal priming to demonstrate that subjective experiences of difficulty play an important role in both the decision to invest cognitive control, as well as the decision to avoid investing control. In further work, I focussed on the temporal dynamics of these subjective experience, using electrophyiological recordings, and also demonstrated that these subjective experience depend on multiple cues.