Do LLMs Know What They Know? Measuring Metacognitive Efficiency with Signal Detection Theory

[Submitted on 26 Mar 2026 (v1), last revised 14 Jul 2026 (this version, v2)]

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Abstract:Standard evaluation of LLM confidence relies on calibration metrics (ECE, Brier score) that conflate how much a model knows (Type-1 accuracy) with how well its confidence signal tracks that knowledge (Type-2 metacognitive sensitivity). We apply Signal Detection Theory (SDT) to decompose these capacities, treating token-level normalised log-probability as a graded confidence variable and answer correctness as the state to be discriminated. We characterise the Type-2 ROC of this signal, including its unequal-variance structure via z-ROC analysis, and — because the meta-d’ efficiency ratio is not well defined for open-ended QA, which lacks a two-alternative Type-1 decision — quantify metacognitive efficiency with a model-free information measure, normalised metacognitive information (meta-I_2r). Applied to four LLMs (Llama-3-8B-Instruct, Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3, Llama-3-8B-Base, Gemma-2-9B-Instruct) across 224,000 factual QA trials, we find: (1) metacognitive information varies more than two-fold across models and co-varies inversely with accuracy — the least accurate model has the most informative confidence — though with four models this ordering cannot be separated from an error-difficulty confound, so we report it as coupling, not decoupling; (2) the confidence signal has model-specific unequal-variance structure (z-ROC slopes 0.81 to 1.18) invisible to calibration metrics; (3) metacognitive information is domain-specific, strongest in Arts & Literature for every model; (4) temperature dissociates Type-1 accuracy from metacognitive information, which stays stable while accuracy shifts. All estimates carry permutation nulls and bootstrap confidence intervals. Pre-registered; code and data public.

Submission history

From: Jon-Paul Cacioli [view email]
[v1] Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:38:28 UTC (566 KB)
[v2] Tue, 14 Jul 2026 01:37:28 UTC (48 KB)