Undecidability and opacity of metacognition in animals and humans

Clark, Kevin; Hassert, Derrick L.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00171

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The arguably best instance involving microbes may be extrapolated from a game scenario called Parrondo's paradox, a set of indeterministic conditions imposing prospective lose-stay winning plays that advance transitions to stable optimal Commentary/Anselme and Güntürkün: How foraging works: Uncertainty magnifies food-seeking motivation ecoevolutionary strategies (Wolf et al 2005). Under such unpredictable homeodynamic and/or ambient constraints, microbes, very similar to taxonomically recent animals, irrationally produce dependable learned/heritable adaptive survival strategies capable of improving and protecting the health and longevity of individuals belonging to extant and future generations, reinforcing provocative notions that universal computational/informational/ physical principles structure expression of irrationality and rationality in foragers, and perhaps predators and cultivators, independently of aneural and neural systems (Bekenstein 2004;Clark 2010a;2010b;Clark & Hassert 2013;Gödel 1931;Ladyman et al 2007).…”

Section: Green and Yuan-fang LImentioning

confidence: 97%

How foraging works: Uncertainty magnifies food-seeking motivation

Anselme

Güntürkün²

2018

Behav Brain Sci

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Food uncertainty has the effect of invigorating food-related responses. Psychologists have noted that mammals and birds respond more to a conditioned stimulus that unreliably predicts food delivery, and ecologists have shown that animals (especially small passerines) consume and/or hoard more food and can get fatter when access to that resource is unpredictable. Are these phenomena related? We think they are. Psychologists have proposed several mechanistic interpretations, while ecologists have suggested a functional interpretation: the effect of unpredictability on fat reserves and hoarding behavior is an evolutionary strategy acting against the risk of starvation when food is in short supply. Both perspectives are complementary, and we argue that the psychology of incentive motivational processes can shed some light on the causal mechanisms leading animals to seek and consume more food under uncertainty in the wild. Our theoretical approach is in agreement with neuroscientific data relating to the role of dopamine, a neurotransmitter strongly involved in incentive motivation, and its plausibility has received some explanatory and predictive value with respect to Pavlovian phenomena. Overall, we argue that the occasional and unavoidable absence of food rewards has motivational effects (called incentive hope) that facilitate foraging effort. It is shown that this hypothesis is computationally tenable, leading foragers in an unpredictable environment to consume more food items and to have higher long-term energy storage than foragers in a predictable environment.

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Section: Green and Yuan-fang LImentioning

confidence: 97%

How foraging works: Uncertainty magnifies food-seeking motivation

Anselme

Güntürkün²

2018

Behav Brain Sci

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“…However, if intelligence and/or consciousness is expressed at the level of single cells, then multicellularity, whether it be associated with microorganisms, plants, or animals, can be reasonably expected to imbue higher degrees of consciousness in healthy organisms. It should be noted that the phenomenon of consciousness is a hypothetical construct with serious flaws contributing to our less than perfect understanding about its nature in humans (Clark, 2012; Clark and Hassert, 2013). In view of these conditions, we speculate that plant-specific consciousness allows higher plants to behave in an intelligent manner in order to optimize their coping with environmental challenges and diverse stress situations (Trewavas, 2003, 2005, 2009; Trewavas and Baluška, 2011).…”

Section: From Microbial Conscious Cells To Plant Consciousness?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Microorganism and filamentous fungi drive evolution of plant synapses

Baluška¹,

Mancuso²

2013

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.

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In the course of plant evolution, there is an obvious trend toward an increased complexity of plant bodies, as well as an increased sophistication of plant behavior and communication. Phenotypic plasticity of plants is based on the polar auxin transport machinery that is directly linked with plant sensory systems impinging on plant behavior and adaptive responses. Similar to the emergence and evolution of eukaryotic cells, evolution of land plants was also shaped and driven by infective and symbiotic microorganisms. These microorganisms are the driving force behind the evolution of plant synapses and other neuronal aspects of higher plants; this is especially pronounced in the root apices. Plant synapses allow synaptic cell–cell communication and coordination in plants, as well as sensory-motor integration in root apices searching for water and mineral nutrition. These neuronal aspects of higher plants are closely linked with their unique ability to adapt to environmental changes.

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“…On the one hand (explicit metacognition), people are fully conscious of what is occurring in their mind, so as to be able to report about them verbally and regulate their learning strategies according to naive theories, which they share and can describe. On the other hand (implicit metacognition), individuals show that their behaviour is strategically controlled in order to reach the proposed goals, but they fail to consciously perceive how their mind is operating, and thus they fail to report it adequately (Clark and Hassert 2013). Thus, it is conjectured that people acquire a genuinely implicit metacognitive knowledge and they apply it to the task they have to carry out.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metacognition in self-regulated multimedia learning: integrating behavioural, psychophysiological and introspective measures

Antonietti

Colombo

Nuzzo

2014

Learning, Media and Technology

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This study aims at investigating students' strategies -as revealed by behavioural, psychophysiological and introspective measures -which are applied during the free exploration of multimedia instructional presentations, which requires students to self-regulate their learning processes. Two multimedia presentations were constructed and presented to a sample of 20 undergraduates in two conditions: written text + pictures vs. audio text + pictures. While students were engaged in the study of the presentations, their eye movements were registered and psychophysiological indices were monitored. Students' learning outcomes were assessed and a questionnaire was employed to record students' awareness of the mental processes involved in the task. Results showed that students were able to discriminate between the written-and audio-text conditions and self-regulate their behaviour accordingly. A model, assuming psychophysiological indices as predictors of different eye-movement patterns, highlighted significant differences between the written-and the audio-text conditions. A regression model, considering learning outcomes as a dependent variable, showed that the number of correct responses could be predicted according to the level of cognitive effort needed during the exploration of the multimedia presentations.

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Undecidability and opacity of metacognition in animals and humans

Cited by 14 publications

References 37 publications

How foraging works: Uncertainty magnifies food-seeking motivation

How foraging works: Uncertainty magnifies food-seeking motivation

Microorganism and filamentous fungi drive evolution of plant synapses

Metacognition in self-regulated multimedia learning: integrating behavioural, psychophysiological and introspective measures

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