Here, the question is whether animals may experience some sense of knowing what they do or do not know when faced with a decision. This is a difficult thing to assess in animals given the role of verbal reports in our understanding of human metacognition. However, certain experimental procedures have provided some insight into the metacognitive skills of nonhuman animals.  This research is in collaboration with David Smith who developed one of the first experimental tasks to assess metacognition in nonhuman animals. In these tasks, monkeys are presented with various psychophysical and memory tasks for which stimuli can be categorized objectively as more difficult or less difficult for the animals based on task performance. Animals also are given an additional response option, called the uncertainty response, that acts in various ways to remove the contingencies of the primary response to the stimulus (e.g., to remove a trial from the screen rather than force the animal to classify a quantity of dots as large or small). In many cases, the animals use that response on exactly those trials for which the primary response (e.g., “large” or “small”) is made least efficiently. This suggests that the monkeys may monitor their own knowledge states when faced with decisions about how to respond to stimuli. However, alternate explanations also remain, and we are currently working to separate associative and cognitive explanations for these patterns of results (for example, to determine whether the uncertainty response is used as a result of uncertainty that is felt by the animal, or if it is used because the animal is tracking the reinforcement history of its primary responses in the presence of different kinds of stimuli). We also are examining the extent to which the use of the uncertainty response generalizes to new tasks. This also will provide an indication of the extent to which these responses reflect metacognition. In our newest work, we are examining metacognitive illusions and the degree to which animals and humans can use metacognition to selectively “offload” the most difficult tasks when faced with multiple projects to complete. 

Other projects, with chimpanzees, have shown that these animals seek-information based on what they know that they know, and they also provide measures of confidence in their own memory abilities (click here for a summary of one recent study). They do this by anticipating food reward for correct responses even before any feedback is given to them.  This research is supported by the National Science Foundation (BCS – 2043667, BCS – 1552405, BCS – 0956993 and BCS – 0634662), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (RO1-HD061455) and the European Science Foundation (as part of a Eurocore Programme entitled Consciousness in a Natural and Cultural Context). 

 

Selected Recent Publications:

James, B. T., Parrish, A. E, Guild, A. S., Creamer, C., Kelly, V., Perdue, B. M., Kelly, A. J., & Beran, M. J. (2021). Go if you know: Preschool children’s movements reflect their metacognitive monitoring. Cognitive Development, 17, 101001. Link

Smith, T. R., Parrish, A. E., Creamer, C., Rossettie, M., & Beran, M. J. (2020). Capuchin monkeys (sometimes) go when they know: Confidence movements in Sapajus apella. Cognition, 199. 104237. 

Smith, T. R., Smith, J. D., & Beran, M. J. (2018). Not knowing what one knows: A meaningful failure of metacognition in capuchin monkeys. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 5, 55-67. Click here for the full paper.

Beran, M. J., Perdue, B. M., Church, B. A., & Smith, J. D. (2016). Capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) modulate their use of an uncertainty response depending on risk. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 42, 32-43.

Beran, M. J., Perdue, B. M., Futch, S. E., Smith, J. D., Evans, T. A., & Parrish, A. E. (2015). Go when you know: Chimpanzees’ confidence movements reflect their responses in a computerized memory task. Cognition, 142, 236-246.

Perdue, B. M., Church, B. A., Smith, J. D., & Beran, M. J. (2015). Exploring potential mechanisms underlying the lack of uncertainty monitoring in capuchin monkeys. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, Article 28. Click here for full-text PDF file.

Sayers, K., Evans, T. A., Menzel, E., Smith, J. D., & Beran, M. J. (2015). The misbehaviour of a metacognitive monkey. Behaviour, 152, 727-756. 

Zakrzewski, A. C., Perdue, B. M., Beran, M. J., Church, B. A., & Smith, J. D. (2014). Cashing out: The decisional flexibility of uncertainty responses in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and humans (Homo sapiens). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 40, 490-501. 

Beran, M. J., Smith, J. D., & Perdue, B. M. (2013).  Language-trained chimpanzees name what they have seen, but look first at what they have not seen.  Psychological Science, 24, 660-666.