揭示元认知判断中顺序依赖的非交换本质,提出可验证的实验检验方法。
Operational Noncommutativity in Sequential Metacognitive Judgments
- 将元认知判断建模为作用于内部状态空间的操作,区分评估反馈与观测结果。
- 通过数值模型证明顺序依赖无法用经典隐变量解释,存在真实非交换性。
- 适用于研究感知决策后信心、错误率等连续判断的心理学家和认知科学家。
元认知指对自身认知过程的监控与调节,其本质具有顺序性:个体先评估内部状态,更新后可能在新标准下再次评估。虽然认知中的顺序效应已被广泛记录,但其根源是经典状态变化,还是深层结构的非交换性仍不明确。本文构建了一个操作性框架,将元认知评估视为作用于内部状态空间的变换操作,并通过概率读出分离评估的反作用与可观测输出。我们证明,顺序依赖性排除了任何忠实的布尔交换表示。进一步探讨更强问题:能否通过引入经典隐变量扩大状态空间来解释所有顺序效应?为此,我们引入反事实确定性和评估非侵入性两个假设,在此条件下,所有序列读数的联合分布会导出一组可检验的成对序列相关性约束。违反这些约束即排除任何经典非侵入性解释,从而证实真正的非交换性。我们提供一个三维旋转模型及其完整数值示例,展示此类违反现象。同时提出包含感知决策后信心、错误可能性及知觉熟悉度判断的行为范式及相应实证测试方案。本框架纯属操作性与代数性质,不涉及量子物理基础。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Metacognition, understood as the monitoring and regulation of one's own cognitive processes, is inherently sequential: an agent evaluates an internal state, updates it, and may then re-evaluate under modified criteria. Order effects in cognition are well documented, yet it remains unclear whether such effects reflect classical state changes or reveal a deeper structural non-commutativity. We develop an operational framework that makes this distinction explicit. In our formulation, metacognitive evaluations are modeled as state-transforming operations acting on an internal state space with probabilistic readouts, thereby separating evaluation back-action from observable output. We show that order dependence prevents any faithful Boolean-commutative representation. We then address a stronger question: can observed order effects always be explained by enlarging the state space with classical latent variables? To formalize this issue, we introduce two assumptions, counterfactual definiteness and evaluation non-invasiveness, under which the existence of a joint distribution over all sequential readouts implies a family of testable constraints on pairwise sequential correlations. Violation of these constraints rules out any classical non-invasive account and certifies what we call genuine non-commutativity. We provide an explicit three-dimensional rotation model with fully worked numerical examples that exhibits such violations. We also outline a behavioral paradigm involving sequential confidence, error-likelihood, and feeling-of-knowing judgments following a perceptual decision, together with the corresponding empirical test. No claim is made regarding quantum physical substrates; the framework is purely operational and algebraic.
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