Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) adaptively monitor uncertainty while multi-tasking

Abstract

As researchers explore animals’ capacity for metacognition and uncertainty monitoring, some paradigms allow the criticism that animal participants—who are always extensively trained in one stimulus domain within which they learn to avoid difficult trials—use task-specific strategies to avoid aversive stimuli instead of responding to a generalized state of uncertainty like that humans might use. We addressed this criticism with an uncertainty-monitoring task environment in which four different task domains were interleaved randomly trial by trial. Four of five macaques (Macaca mulatta) were able to make adaptive uncertainty responses while multi-tasking, suggesting the generality of the psychological signal that occasions these responses. The findings suggest that monkeys may have an uncertainty-monitoring capacity that is like that of humans in transcending task-specific cues and extending simultaneously to multiple domains.

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

“…Yet again, humans ( Figure 2A) and monkeys ( Figure 2B) displayed an increase in the use of the UR corresponding with a decrease in use of the categorization responses for the most difficult trials. Other experiments explored metacognition in rhesus monkeys and showed that the use of the UR or other metacognitive responses transfers across a variety of different tasks (Basile, Schroeder, Brown, Templer, & Hampton, 2015;Brown, Templer, & Hampton, 2017;Kornell, Son, & Terrace, 2007;Smith, Redford, Beran, & Washburn, 2010;Templer & Hampton, 2012) and that monkeys will continue using the UR when feedback is delayed (Smith, Beran, Redford, & Washburn, 2006), minimizing the likelihood that task-specific environmental cues are responsible for the use of the UR. Figure 1. A.…”

The highs and lows of theoretical interpretation in animal-metacognition research

“…For example, researchers [35] asked macaques to monitor uncertainty while multi-tasking. Four different difficult discriminations were randomly intermixed trial by trial.…”

“…To address this concern, researchers removed the reward contingency for that response [19,22,35]. In one case [22], macaques judged whether arrays were less or more numerous than a session-specific numerosity.…”

“…Given the question's importance, Smith and his colleagues inaugurated research on animal metacognition [15][16][17][18][19]. This area has been reviewed [11][12][13]20], and active research continues in this area [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39].…”

Metacognition and reasoning

“…Thus, a number of comparative psychologists have claimed to find evidence of metacognitive abilities in primates who seem to lack equivalent mindreading abilities [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. They suggest that the evolution of these first-person monitoring-and-control abilities would have provided the foundation for the later evolution of third-person mindreading [24].…”