Metamemory or metacognition — your ability to monitor your own cognitive processes — is central to efficient and effective learning. Research has also shown that, although we customarily have more faith in person’s judgment the more confident they are in it, a person’s accuracy and their confidence in their accuracy are two quite separate things (which is not to say it’s not a useful heuristic; just that it’s far from infallible). A new study involving 32 participants has looked at individual differences in judging personal accuracy when assessing a geometric image, comparing these differences to differences in the brain.

The perceptual test used simple stimuli, and each one was customized to the individual's level of skill in order to achieve a score of 71%. In keeping with previous research, there was considerable variation in the participants’ accuracy in assessing their own responses. But the intriguing result was that these differences were reflected in differences in the volume of gray matter in the right anterior prefrontal cortex. Moreover, those who were better at judging their own performance not only had more neurons in that region, but also tended to have denser connections between the region and the white matter connected to it. The anterior prefrontal cortex is associated with various executive functions, and seems to be more developed in humans compared to other animals.

The finding should not be taken to indicate a genetic basis for metacognitive ability. The finding implies nothing about whether the physical differences are innate or achieved by training and experience. However it seems likely that, like most skills and abilities, a lot of it is training.