Konstantina Sokratous

arXiv2026

metasignal: A Python Package for Comprehensive Metacognitive Analysis and Decision-Making

Metasignal is an open-source Python package for signal detection theory (SDT) and metacognitive measurement. It implements the 17 metacognitive measures evaluated by Rahnev (2025), together with the reference variables d' (perceptual sensitivity), response criterion c (response bias), and mean confidence. The 17 measures comprise three meta-d' family estimates, meta-d', M-ratio, and M-difference; four nonparametric Type-2 measures, the Type-2 area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve (AUC2), Gamma, Phi, and delta confidence, together with their eight SDT-normalized ratio and difference forms; and two model-based measures, meta-noise and meta-uncertainty. A single function computes the complete set from trial-level stimulus, response, and confidence arrays. `metasignal` currently supports binary (two-alternative) discrimination tasks, in which each trial's stimulus and response are coded with exactly two categories. The package also provides a command-line interface, group summaries, bootstrap confidence intervals, permutation tests, optional hierarchical Bayesian models, and information-theoretic measures. `metasignal` unifies these measures in a single platform to encourage broader metacognition research and adoption in decision-making studies.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2026

Reality Monitoring in Large Language Models: Self-Knowledge That Transforms with Conversation Memory

A conversational AI that cannot tell its own output from what a user said will treat its own mistakes as user-provided facts. In humans, this capacity is called reality monitoring, and its failures are linked to hallucinations, delusions, and confabulation, yet whether LLMs possess it remains untested. Here we show, across two experiments and six LLMs, that source attribution depends on how conversational memory is structured: ceiling accuracy for self-generated content under minimal memory demands reverses to a fragile external-item advantage once episodic delay removes that shortcut. Feedback exposes two failures: in some models, internal and external judgments swap; in others, accuracy improves while confidence decouples from correctness, dissociations invisible to existing benchmarks. Across models, this pattern implicates active, not aggregate, parameter count. This suggests that as AI systems take on autonomous, multi-turn roles, evaluating what they know is not enough: tracking where that knowledge came from may matter equally.

cs.AI↗