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.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant HD-38051 and by Grant BCS-0634662 from the National Science Foundation. All applicable institutional rules and regulations regarding animal care and use were followed in the care and testing of the monkeys, and the experiment complied with all laws of the United States of America. The authors thank Theodore Evans for his assistance with data collection.
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Smith, J.D., Redford, J.S., Beran, M.J. et al. Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) adaptively monitor uncertainty while multi-tasking. Anim Cogn 13, 93–101 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0249-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0249-5