Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2009
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.
Recommended Citation
Smith, J. D., Beran, M. J., Couchman, J. J., Coutinho, M. V. C., & Boomer, J. (2009). Animal metacognition: Problems and prospects. Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews, 4, 40-53. doi: 10.3819/ccbr.2009.40004
Comments
This article was originally published in the journal Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews. Copyright © J. David Smith 2009.
The version of record is available here with the permission of co-author Michael Beran.