Re: Rhesus Monkeys Show Cognitive Self Awareness

"Rich Travsky" <" traRvEsky"@hotmMOVEail.com> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/fast-execute.cgi/article-page.html?article=64980009
>
>  BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Humans are able to feel uncertainty. They know when
>  they know something and when they don't. This capacity for
>  "metacognition" (thinking about thinking), or cognitive self-awareness,
>  is thought to be one of humans' most sophisticated cognitive capacities
>  and to be linked to our reflective consciousness.
>
>  One of the important questions in the field of animal and human
psychology
>  is whether this metacognitive capacity is uniquely human, or whether
>  nonverbal, nonhuman animal species have a level of metacognition that
>  approaches that of humans. Animals could demonstrate a capacity for
>  metacognition if they could report their uncertainty or doubt when
>  confronted with a difficult trial or situation. However, research in this
>  area has been slow to emerge because it is inherently difficult to ask
>  nonverbal animals whether they know, or feel uncertain, or have doubts.
>
>  Steps toward solving this problem now have been made by a research team
led
>  by John David Smith, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of
>  Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at
Buffalo
>  and UB's Center for Cognitive Science. The research team includes Wendy
E.
>  Shields, Ph.D., of the Department of Psychology, University of Montana,
and
>  David A. Washburn, Ph.D., of the Language Research Center at Georgia
State
>  University.
>
>  Their research, "The Comparative Psychology of Uncertainty Monitoring and
>  Metacognition," will be presented in the fall issue of The Behavioral and
>  Brain Sciences, one of the premier journals in the field of cognitive
>  science.
>
>  The article describes three studies by the authors with humans, a group
of
>  Rhesus monkeys and one bottlenose dolphin that used behavioral, nonverbal
>  measures of metacognition. In these tasks, animals experienced a mix of
>  "hard" and "easy" perceptual or memory trials. If they completed the
trial,
>  the subjects earned a reward when correct or a timeout period when wrong.
>
>  "The key innovation in this research also was to grant animals an
'uncertain'
>  response so that they could decline to complete any trials of their
choosing,"
>  Smith says. "Given this option, animals might choose to complete trials
when
>  they are confident they know, but decline them when they feel something
like
>  uncertainty. To show this behavioral pattern, though, animals would have
to
>  monitor some psychological signal of confidence or uncertainty and
respond
>  adaptively to it."
>
>  The researchers have shown that the monkeys and the dolphin used the
>  "uncertain" response in a pattern that is essentially identical to the
>  pattern with which uncertain humans use it.
>  ...
>  Moreover, it is clear that a higher-level cognitive interpretation of the
>  results is warranted -- low-level behavioral explanations cannot explain
the
>  phenomena. In short, Smith says, "the results suggest that some animals
have
>  functional features of, or parallels to, human conscious metacognition."
>
>  They apparently know when they know and when they don't know, he adds.
>
>  Another intriguing finding emerging from this area of research is that
species
>  that are less cognitively sophisticated (e.g., rats and pigeons) have not
thus
>  far expressed the same capacity for cognitive monitoring or cognitive
>  self-awareness as that expressed by the monkeys and dolphin in the
studies.
>  Smith and his co-researchers point out that by using the same
metacognitive
>  paradigms broadly across species, scientists may be able to draw the map
showing
>  which species have evolved cognitive self-awareness. This could reveal
when in
>  evolution reflective cognition emerged and how widespread this capacity
is among
>  animals.
>  ...
>
> Now that's darn interesting. If cognitive self awareness can be shown in
> monkeys, then this could be said to go waaaaaayyy back.

Perhaps a bit further than you might initially wish to consider. . . . . .
if you like a taste of sushi. . . . . .

http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001327/00/Evolution_of_Consciousness.pdf

While the conclusion might be that Octopus Vulgaris is not guilty of
cognitive self-awareness, it might be closer than many think.

Regards
bk