Animal Metacognition: Problems and Prospects

Abstract

Researchers have begun to evaluate whether nonhuman animals share humans' capacity for metacognitive monitoring and self-regulation. Using perception, memory, numerical, and foraging paradigms, they have tested apes, capuchins, a dolphin, macaques, pigeons, and rats. However, recent theoretical and formal-modeling work has confirmed that some paradigms allow the criticism that low-level associative mechanisms could create the appearance of uncertainty monitoring in animals. This possibility has become a central issue as researchers reflect on existing phenomena and pause to evaluate the area's current status. The present authors discuss the associative question and offer our evaluation of the field. Associative mechanisms explain poorly some of the area's important results. The next phase of research in this area should consolidate the gains achieved by those results and work toward a theoretical understanding of the cognitive and decisional (not associative) capacities that animals show in some of the referent experiments.Humans feel uncertain. They know when they do not know or remember, and they respond well to uncertainty by deferring response and seeking help or information. Their responses to doubt and uncertainty ground research on metacognition, or thinking about thinking (Benjamin et al.

Honey bees selectively avoid difficult choices

“…If animals opt out more on difficult than easy tasks, if opting out improves performance on difficult tasks, and if they can apply the opt-out strategy to a novel task, then this has been taken as evidence that animals can modify their decision-making strategy based on their degree of uncertainty. This result has been reported for nonhuman primates, dolphins, dogs, and rats (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12). However, some strongly argue that all comparative studies using opt-out paradigms can be explained through associative mechanisms that do not require judgments of uncertainty (3,(13)(14)(15).…”

“…This result has been reported for nonhuman primates, dolphins, dogs, and rats (3-12). However, some strongly argue that all comparative studies using opt-out paradigms can be explained through associative mechanisms that do not require judgments of uncertainty (3,(13)(14)(15).Because two alternative mechanisms have been proposed to explain the same behavioral data, Morgan's Canon (16) cautions that when presented with two alternative explanations, we are obliged to choose the simpler of the two. However, directly comparing these hypotheses is difficult because there is no agreed neural model for uncertainty processing.…”

“…This result has been reported for nonhuman primates, dolphins, dogs, and rats (3-12). However, some strongly argue that all comparative studies using opt-out paradigms can be explained through associative mechanisms that do not require judgments of uncertainty (3,(13)(14)(15).…”

“…Whether the ability to monitor uncertainty exists in nonhuman animals is currently highly contentious. Smith et al (3,4) developed the opt-out paradigm to test uncertainty monitoring in animals in which an animal must solve a discrimination task that varies in difficulty. The animal is rewarded when correct and punished for an incorrect choice.…”

Not knowing what one knows: A Meaningful failure of metacognition in capuchin monkeys.

“…Animal research in metacognition has generated behavioral data that support the claim that some nonhuman primates, such as macaques (Macaca mulatta) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), possess a metacognitive awareness of their own knowledge states (for reviews, see Smith, Beran, Couchman, Coutinho, & Boomer, 2009a;Smith, Couchman, & Beran, 2012, 2014; however, for the past decade the evidence of metacognitive abilities in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus apella) has been mixed (Smith, Beran, Couchman, Coutinho, & Boomer, 2009b). We propose here that this is a meaningful "failure" that has broad implications for the issues raised above and for comparative methodologies in studying metacognition.…”