| Abstract [eng] |
This thesis aimed to investigate the relationship between metacognition and different phases of the menstrual cycle during a facial emotion recognition task, while accounting for psychological and subjective variables. Key objectives included evaluating changes in psychological metrics, confidence ratings, performance sensitivity (d’) and metacognitive sensitivity (AUROC2) across the phases. Forty-one naturally cycling women completed a facial emotion recognition task during three different phases of the menstrual cycle: early follicular (EF), ovulation (O), and mid-luteal (ML). Participants chose the perceived emotional facial expressions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral) at varying intensities (25%, 50% and 100%), and provided confidence ratings after each response. Psychological assessments included alexithymia (TAS-20), positive (PA) and negative (NA) affects (PANAS), emotional arousal (pre-/post-task), and self-reported performance (SRP). Menstrual phase had a significant effect on psychological parameters: PA and SRP were higher in O than in EF and ML phases, and ML than EF. While NA was higher in EF than O, and ML than O. Alexithymia, affect and arousal, had no effect on confidence, d’, or AUROC2. SRP had an effect on confidence, where higher confidence was observed for higher SRP scores than lower. Furthermore, confidence was stable across phases overall but was significantly higher in O when recognizing 25% intensity negative emotions than in EF and ML phases. d’ was stable across the menstrual phases but increased for emotional than neutral expressions. While AUROC2 showed no overall phase effect, interactions with emotion and intensity revealed higher AUROC2 for 100% anger expressions in EF than ML phase, and reduced AUROC2 for fear in O than EF phase. In summary, while metacognitive performance remained stable across menstrual phases, fluctuations emerged in relation to emotion, facial expression intensity and phase, with minimal effect of the psychological and self-reported evaluations on metacognitive performance. |
