Uncertainty Monitoring and Metacognition by Animals

Abstract

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.