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The Highs and Lows of Theoretical Interpretation in Animal-Metacognition Research

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The Cognitive Neuroscience of Metacognition

Abstract

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 judgment and interpretation within comparative psychology.

This chapter is adapted from: Smith JD, Couchman JJ, Beran MJ (2012) The highs and lows of theoretical interpretation in animal-metacognition research. Phil Trans R Soc B 367:1297–1309

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Acknowledgments

The preparation of this article was supported by Grant 1R01HD061455 from NICHD and Grant BCS-0956993 from NSF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science, The University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, 14260-4110, USA

    J. David Smith

  2. Department of Psychology, Albright College, Reading, PA, 19604, USA

    Justin J. Couchman

  3. Language Research Center, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, 30302, USA

    Michael J. Beran

Authors
  1. J. David Smith
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  2. Justin J. Couchman
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  3. Michael J. Beran
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. David Smith .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York, USA

    Stephen M. Fleming

  2. Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Christopher D. Frith

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Smith, J.D., Couchman, J.J., Beran, M.J. (2014). The Highs and Lows of Theoretical Interpretation in Animal-Metacognition Research. In: Fleming, S., Frith, C. (eds) The Cognitive Neuroscience of Metacognition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45190-4_5

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