Uncertainty Monitoring and Metacognition by Animals

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. David Smith ◽  
David A. Washburn
Keyword(s):  
Research Literature ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Uncertainty Monitoring ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Functional Features ◽  
Human Participants

Humans have the capacity to feel consciously uncertain and to know when they do not know. These feelings and responses ground the research literature on uncertainty monitoring and metacognition (i.e., cognition about cognition). It is a natural and important question whether nonhuman animals share this sophisticated cognitive capacity. We summarize current research that confirms animals' capacity for uncertainty monitoring. This research includes perception and memory paradigms and monkey, dolphin, and human participants. It contains some of the strongest existing performance similarities between humans and other animals. There is a strong isomorphism between the uncertainty-monitoring capacities of humans and animals. Indeed, the results show that animals have functional features of or parallels to human metacognition and human conscious cognition.

The partial availability of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition: the ‘failed functional features hypothesis’

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 187-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Hawkins ◽  
Cecilia Yuet-hung Chan
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Functional Features ◽  
Operator Movement

A number of studies in the research literature have proposed that Universal Grammar (UG) is partially available to adult second language learners. Attempts to provide a syntactic characterization of that partial availability have only recently begun to appear, however. In this article we will argue that speakers of Chinese (a language without wh-operator movement in overt syntax) learning second language English (a language with wh-operator movement in overt syntax) establish mental representations for English which involve pronominal binding rather than operator movement. It will be suggested that this divergence from native-speaker representations is an effect of the inaccessibility of features of functional categories in second language acquisition, what we will refer to as the ‘failed functional features hypothesis’. Implications are drawn from the findings for the syntactic characterization of accessibility to UG more generally in second language acquisition.

scholarly journals Listening to Horses

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Dashper
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Multispecies Ethnography ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Animal Use ◽  
Vulnerable Subjects ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Sentient Beings

The involvement of nonhuman animals in human sport and leisure raises questions about the ethics of animal use (and sometimes abuse) for human pleasure. This article draws on a multispecies ethnography of amateur riding in the United Kingdom to consider some ways in which human participants try to develop attentive relationships with their equine partners. An ethical praxis of paying attention to horses as individual, sentient beings with intrinsic value beyond their relation to human activities can lead to the development of mutually rewarding interspecies relationships and partnerships within sport. However, these relationships always develop within the context of human-centric power relations that position animals as vulnerable subjects, placing moral responsibility on humans to safeguard animal interests in human sport and leisure.

Positive and negative patterning in human causal learning

2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (2b) ◽  
pp. 121-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Young ◽  
Edward A. Wasserman ◽  
Janelle L. Johnson ◽  
Farrasha L. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Causal Learning ◽  
Negative Patterning ◽  
Exemplar Models ◽  
Learning Tasks ◽  
Human Causal Learning ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Within Subjects ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Compound Cue ◽  
Positive Patterning

Investigations of patterning discriminations by nonhuman animals have generally found that positive patterning is easier to learn than negative patterning. Studies of patterning discriminations in human causal learning tasks have failed to document any differences between positive and negative patterning. In the present study, human participants predicted an outcome on trials involving either a compound cue or its elements. Positive and negative patterning problems were successfully solved in a within-subjects design; negative patterning problems proved to be more difficult when an additional, 50% contingent cue was included (Experiment 2), but not when it was excluded (Experiment 1). Possible reasons for these results are discussed. The discussion concludes with an analysis of exemplar models (e.g., Pearce, 1994) of human causal learning and considers the conditions under which these models do and do not anticipate our results.

Can social network sites facilitate civic engagement? Assessing dynamic relationship between social media and civic activities among young people

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua Pang ◽  
Kaiyang Qin ◽  
Min Ji
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Functional Features

PurposeThe primary goal of this article is to review the existing studies and offer clarity regarding the association between social media adoption and youth civic engagement.Design/methodology/approachThis research systematically summarizes and reviews 42 original articles published from 2010 to 2019 with an objective of offering insightful results. Additionally, a theoretical framework was carefully designed by adopting various conceptions from citizen participation and computer-mediated communication research literature.FindingsThe findings demonstrate that social media usage could generally have a positive correlation with civic participation among younger generations. Moreover, the result also highlights that certain functional features of social media uses including using social media for news consumption and expression could significantly predict civic engagement.Originality/valueDespite the ever-growing importance of social media technologies, investigations on their differential, nonlinear and even inconsistent effects on civic engagement remain theoretically ambiguous and empirically unsubstantiated. The study represents one of the first scholarly attempts to review, summarize and analyze the extant research evidence from the past ten years.

scholarly journals Perceptual Tuning Influences Rule Generalization: Testing Humans With Monkey-Tailored Stimuli

i-Perception ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 204166951984613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Ravignani ◽  
Piera Filippi ◽  
W. Tecumseh Fitch
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Research ◽  
Squirrel Monkeys ◽  
Auditory Stimuli ◽  
Generalization Testing ◽  
Structural Rule ◽  
Frequency Range ◽  
Human Speech ◽  
Logic Testing ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Participants

Comparative research investigating how nonhuman animals generalize patterns of auditory stimuli often uses sequences of human speech syllables and reports limited generalization abilities in animals. Here, we reverse this logic, testing humans with stimulus sequences tailored to squirrel monkeys. When test stimuli are familiar (human voices), humans succeed in two types of generalization. However, when the same structural rule is instantiated over unfamiliar but perceivable sounds within squirrel monkeys’ optimal hearing frequency range, human participants master only one type of generalization. These findings have methodological implications for the design of comparative experiments, which should be fair towards all tested species’ proclivities and limitations.

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

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1594) ◽  
pp. 1297-1309 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. David Smith ◽  
Justin J. Couchman ◽  
Michael J. Beran
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Psychology ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Theoretical Interpretation ◽  
Natural Question ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Scientific Inference

Humans feel uncertain. They know when they do not know. These feelings and the responses to them ground the research literature on metacognition. It is a natural question whether animals share this cognitive capacity, and thus animal metacognition has become an influential research area within comparative psychology. Researchers have explored this question by testing many species using perception and memory paradigms. There is an emerging consensus that animals share functional parallels with humans’ conscious metacognition. Of course, this research area poses difficult issues of scientific inference. How firmly should we hold the line in insisting that animals’ performances are low-level and associative? How high should we set the bar for concluding that animals share metacognitive capacities with humans? This area offers a constructive case study for considering theoretical problems that often confront comparative psychologists. The authors present this case study and address diverse issues of scientific judgement and interpretation within comparative psychology.

Journeys Together: Horses and Humans in Partnership

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynda Birke ◽  
Jo Hockenhull
Keyword(s):  
Companion Animals ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Human Participants

Many living with companion animals hope for “good relationships” based on trust, mutuality, and cooperation. Relationships develop from mutual actions, yet research often overlooks nonhumans as mindful actors within relationships. This is a study of horse/human dyads, using multimethod approaches intended to include horses as participants. We ask: can “good relationships” be observed, especially when the pair know each other well? We studied familiar/unfamiliar pairs, negotiating simple obstacles, to explore qualities of cooperation between pairs. Interviews with human participants elicited perceptions of horses’ “personalities” and reactions. We analyzed video recordings of interactions and also showed them to external observers. We identified differences in attention, tension and coordination: familiar pairs were more coordinated, mutually attentive, and less tense, and they showed less resistance. That is, some relationships displayed discernible qualities of “working together.” We cannot know nonhuman animals’ experiences, but knowing how they behave says something about their agency within interspecies relationships.

scholarly journals A meta-analysis on uncertainty monitoring in four non-primate animal species: Pigeons, rats, large-billed crows, and bees

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhizhen Qu ◽  
Sze Chai Kwok
Keyword(s):  
Effect Size ◽  
Animal Species ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Primate Species ◽  
Published Data ◽  
Uncertainty Monitoring ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
Functional Features ◽  
Performance Results ◽  
Positive Effect

Humans have the metacognitive capacity to be aware of what they do and do not know. While uncertainty monitoring has long been regarded as uniquely human, researchers in search of the polygenetic root of this ability have gathered evidence that primate species possess functional features parallel to humans. However, there were no systematic studies that quantitively take into account of extant data for these non-primate animals. Through a meta-analysis, we collected published data reported in 11 articles from 55 individual non-primate animals spanning over four species on the opt-out paradigm, the most prevailing paradigms used to test nonhuman animals uncertainty monitoring. We used chosen-forced advantage and opt-out rate to quantify animals performance results for computing the aggregated effect size for this literature. We found that these four NPA species process a significantly positive effect size for both scores and identified the moderators that have contributed to the inconsistencies across these studies. Implications for theories on metacognition are discussed.

scholarly journals Uncertainty Monitoring by Young Children in a Computerized Task

Scientifica ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Beran ◽  
Scott Decker ◽  
Allison Schwartz ◽  
J. David Smith
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Correct Classification ◽  
Uncertainty Monitoring ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Adult Humans ◽  
Computerized Task ◽  
Metacognitive Abilities ◽  
Early Developmental

Adult humans show sophisticated metacognitive abilities, including the ability to monitor uncertainty. Unfortunately, most measures of uncertainty monitoring are limited to use with adults due to their general complexity and dependence on explicit verbalization. However, recent research with nonhuman animals has successfully developed measures of uncertainty monitoring that are simple and do not require explicit verbalization. The purpose of this study was to investigate metacognition in young children using uncertainty monitoring tests developed for nonhumans. Children judged whether stimuli were more pink or blue—stimuli nearest the pink-blue midpoint were the most uncertain and the most difficult to classify. Children also had an option to acknowledge difficulty and gain the necessary information for correct classification. As predicted, children most often asked for help on the most difficult stimuli. This result confirms that some metacognitive abilities appear early in cognitive development. The tasks of animal metacognition research clearly have substantial utility for exploring the early developmental roots of human metacognition.

The Animal Question Meets Environmental Policy—Perspectives from Finland

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-271
Author(s):  
Outi Ratamäki
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Animal Question

Abstract The welfare and rights of nonhuman animals have become highly politicized issues, and political arguments concerning these topics are bound to collide with opposing views and face problems of legitimacy. This article seeks insights especially by drawing comparisons with environmental policy. This is implemented by showing how the animal question has been connected with different environmentally relevant policy questions in Finland. Analysis is backed up by earlier research literature about the differences between animal and environmental questions. This analysis shows that, in real-life situations, these two policy goals can be molded into various combinations, and the theoretical and sometimes highly polarized debates about the differences between the animal question and environmentalism do not always lead to conflict.

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