Technical Report abstract


Nature Neuroscience 10, 257 - 261 (2007)
Published online: 21 January 2007 | doi:10.1038/nn1840

Post-decision wagering objectively measures awareness

Navindra Persaud1, Peter McLeod1 & Alan Cowey1


The lack of an accepted measure of awareness has made claims that accurate decisions can be made without awareness controversial. Here we introduce a new objective measure of awareness, post-decision wagering. We show that participants fail to maximize cash earnings by wagering high following correct decisions in blindsight, the Iowa gambling task and an artificial grammar task. This demonstrates, without the uncertainties associated with the conventional subjective measures of awareness (verbal reports and confidence ratings), that the participants were not aware that their decisions were correct. Post-decision wagering may be used to study the neural correlates of consciousness.

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  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3UD, UK.

Correspondence to: Navindra Persaud1 e-mail: nav.persaud@utoronto.ca



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