Feeling competent may do more than motivate us. A new study in Nature Human Behaviour suggests that the brain can treat confidence and perceived accuracy as intrinsic rewards, then use those rewards to decide which visual information deserves more processing power.
Ivan Tomić, Rodrigo Raimundo and Paul M. Bays tested this idea across a series of visual estimation experiments. Participants judged the direction of moving stimuli while the researchers manipulated either external reward or the participants’ subjective sense of how well they were performing. In some trials, confidence was altered with deceptive feedback; in others, the task itself made one stimulus genuinely easier to estimate than another.
The result was consistent: people devoted more visual resources to stimuli associated with lower uncertainty, better feedback or larger external rewards. That made already well-estimated stimuli even more precise while, paradoxically, making poorly estimated stimuli relatively worse.
This matters because the effect was not simply a conscious decision to “try harder.” The authors modeled the behavior using reinforcement learning, showing that accumulated intrinsic and external rewards could gradually change the value assigned to different stimuli and bias future resource allocation.
In other words, the brain appears to learn from the emotional signal of “I am good at this.” Perceived competence becomes part of the reward history that shapes what receives attention next.
The finding has a strong mindset dimension. It suggests that attention is not allocated only according to objective importance. It can also be shaped by a self-reinforcing loop: confidence increases attention, increased attention improves performance, and improved performance further strengthens confidence.
That loop can be adaptive when competence points toward genuinely useful information. But it can also become counterproductive. In the experiments, reward-driven allocation sometimes reduced overall accuracy because the brain kept favoring information it already processed well rather than redistributing resources toward what most needed improvement.
This creates an interesting bridge between neuroscience and older philosophical questions about habit and self-perception. What we repeatedly experience as rewarding may become what we notice more easily. Attention, in this view, is not a neutral spotlight. It is partly trained by reinforcement.
That does not mean positive thinking can simply override sensory limits, and the study does not support mystical claims about intention creating external reality. Its implication is subtler: internal evaluations of competence can become biologically meaningful signals that shape future perception.
For contemplative traditions, this is also relevant to the idea that repeated mental habits alter what enters awareness. The modern scientific framing is different, but the broad insight is compatible: experience changes the priorities of attention.
For related material on attention, awareness and contemplative practice, see Templum Dianae’s guide to meditation in Hinduism.