The Curious Incident of the Capuchins

Smith, J. David; Beran, Michael J.; Couchman, Justin J.; Coutinho, Marianna V.C.; Boomer, Joseph

doi:10.3819/ccbr.2009.40008

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 14 publications

(8 reference statements)

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“…However, alternative associative hypotheses have not yet been fully ruled out (Zentall & Stagner, 2010). And while it might be tempting to assume that metacognitive abilities will be consistently found in the primate lineage, the lack of good consistent evidence from capuchin monkeys complicates this view (Smith et al, 2009b).…”

Section: Limited Success In Metacognition Tests In Non-primate Speciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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.…”

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confidence: 99%

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

Smith¹,

Smith²,

Beran³

2018

AB&C

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Section: Limited Success In Metacognition Tests In Non-primate Speciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Smith¹,

Smith²,

Beran³

2018

AB&C

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“…We agree that differences in uncertainty monitoring behaviour across species favour a metarepresentational account over an associative learning competitor, since the species that fail in these tasks (rats and pigeons) excel at such learning (Smith 2005 ;Smith et al 2009 ). But they don't support a metarepresentational account over either of the affectively-based proposals discussed earlier in the 'Affective explanations of the evidence' section.…”

Section: Species Differencesmentioning

confidence: 58%

The emergence of metacognition: affect and uncertainty in animals

Carruthers

Ritchie

2012

Foundations of Metacognition

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Introduction: the meaning of 'metacognition' We assume that readers of this volume will by now have some familiarity with the sorts of paradigms that have been used to provide evidence of metacognition in non-human primates. In a common type of experiment (e.g. Smith et al. 2008), animals are trained to perform a primary task such as making a discrimination of some sort between categories (e.g. sparse versus dense) to achieve a favoured reward (either immediately, or after a delay; Couchman et al. 2010). After training, the animals are also provided with an 'opt out' response of some kind, which they tend to use in difficult cases where they are more likely to make (or have made) an incorrect judgement. Opting out generally either avoids the penalty that accompanies a mistaken answer (such as a timeout before there is another opportunity to obtain a reward), or guarantees a less-favoured reward. Such results are said to show that the animals are aware of their own uncertainty, especially since similar use of the opt-out response in humans is associated with self-attributions of uncertainty. We fully accept that this body of work, taken as a whole, cannot be explained in low-level associationist terms, as involving mere conditioned responses to stimuli. A great deal of careful experimentation has been done to demonstrate that this is not the case, and we are happy to embrace this conclusion (Beran et al. 2009 ; Couchman et al. 2010 ; Smith et al. 2010 ; Washburn et al. 2010). So it should be agreed that the animals have beliefs about the contingencies of the experiment and take executively-controlled decisions that depend on those beliefs (as well as having goals and other states like emotions, which some have been reluctant to attribute to animals; but see Panksepp 2005). However, to say that the animals' behaviour is fully cognitive and executively controlled is not yet to say that it is meta cognitive, in the sense in which this term is employed throughout cognitive and developmental psychology. For metacognition is generally defined as 'thinking about thinking' (Flavell 1979 ; Dunlosky and Metcalfe 2009), and therefore as involving metarepresentation. Moreover, metarepresentation in turn is understood to require a representation that represents another representation, or a mental state whose content represents, and is about , another mental state. This definition of 'metacognition' accords with the standard model for classifying and characterizing metacognitive processes in humans (Nelson and Narens 1990 ; see Fig. 5. 1), in which a metalevel monitors, represents, and controls the processes of object-level cognitive systems. Since those who study metacognitive processes in animals often cite this model with approval (e.g. Smith et al. 2003 , 2006 ; Couchman et al. 2010), we assume that is it some version of this architecture, or some of its components, that the animals in question are claimed to possess when they are said to have metacognitive capacities. And it should be noted that an important aspect of the ...

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“…To answer these questions, similar results have been obtained for monkeys in more abstract situations that often used an uncertainty response that was not rewarded in any way, including Same–Different tasks (Shields et al , 1997) and numerosity tasks (Beran et al , 2006). Uncertainty responding has also been observed on the first trial of novel tasks (Washburn et al , 2006), during delayed matching‐to‐sample meta‐memory judgments (Hampton, 2001), during meta‐memory judgments when transcranial magnetic stimulation disrupts memory traces (Washburn et al , 2009), during serial‐position meta‐memory performance (Smith et al , 1998), and during token‐economy meta‐memory performance (Kornell et al , 2007).…”

Section: Evidence For Animal Meta‐cognitionmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…Thus, it fell to comparative researchers to search for evidence of animal meta‐cognition using tasks that did not involve explicit reports. Smith and colleagues (Shields et al , 1997; Smith et al , 1995; Smith et al , 1998; Smith et al 1997; Smith et al , 2003) began this search by giving a dolphin and rhesus monkeys perceptual discrimination tasks that, in addition to primary task responses, included an opt‐out response – often called the uncertainty response – that allowed them to decline some trials.…”

Section: Evidence For Animal Meta‐cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do actions speak louder than words? A comparative perspective on implicit versus explicit meta‐cognition and theory of mind

Couchman

Beran

Coutinho

et al. 2011

British J of Dev Psycho

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Research in non-human animal (hereafter, animal) cognition has found strong evidence that some animal species are capable of meta-cognitively monitoring their mental states. They know when they know and when they do not know. In contrast, animals have generally not shown robust theory of mind (ToM) capabilities. Comparative research uses methods that are non-verbal, and thus might easily be labelled 'implicit' using the terminology of traditional human cognition. However, comparative psychology has developed several non-verbal methods that are designed to test for aspects of meta-cognition that -while perhaps not fully explicit -go beyond the merely implicit or associative. We believe similar methods might be useful to developmental researchers who work with young children, and may provide a sound empirical alternative to verbal reports. Comparative psychology has moved away from all-or-none categorical labels (e.g., 'implicit' vs. 'explicit') towards a theoretical framework that contains a spectrum of mental abilities ranging from implicit to explicit, and from associative to cognitive to fully conscious. We discuss how this same framework might be applied to developmental psychology when it comes to implicit versus explicit processing and ToM.Early developmental psychology and comparative psychology have similar goals: to discover the psychological capabilities of participants who cannot easily tell us what (or how) they are thinking. In some ways this limitation handicaps researchers by denying us many of the logistical advantages that researchers of adult human cognition take for granted -experience, verbal instructions, lengthy or uninteresting tasks, verbal reports, etc. We thus often rely on indirect measures such as looking time, optional responses, or other observations. When we do create an experiment that works for our participants, we are then faced with the difficult task of interpreting the results. Adults can explain their thought processes in a convincing -though often off-line, post hoc, and even unreliable -way. Young children and animals are less capable of explaining their mental processes, and thus are less capable of defending themselves against alternative explanations for their behaviour.

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The Curious Incident of the Capuchins

Cited by 11 publications

References 14 publications

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

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

The emergence of metacognition: affect and uncertainty in animals

Do actions speak louder than words? A comparative perspective on implicit versus explicit meta‐cognition and theory of mind

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