Figure 3:

The fourth step (M${}_4$) of our incremental description of active inference in terms of the nested processes of perception (M${}_{1-2}$ in Figure 1), action (M${}_3$ in Figure 2), and implicit metacognition (M${}_4$ in this figure), emphasizing the inherently hierarchical, recurrent nature of these generative models. This generative model infers confidence in its own action model in terms of the expected precision ($\mathbf{\gamma }$), which modulates reliance on ${\mathbf{G}}_{\pi }$ for policy selection (as in M${}_3$), based on perceptual inferences (as in M${}_2$). Expected precision ($\mathbf{\gamma }$) changes when inferred policies differ from expected policies. This term increases when posterior (policy-averaged) expected free energy is lower than when averaged under the policy prior $(AC=(\mathbf{\pi }-\overline{\mathbf{\pi }})·{\mathbf{G}}_{\pi }<0)$, and decreases when it is higher $AC>0$).