Do pigeons (Columba livia) seek information when they have insufficient knowledge?

Abstracts

Seeking information in uncertain situations has been interpreted as evidence of metacognitive abilities. We examined whether pigeons could monitor their own knowledge states and seek new information when in need. In Experiment 1, we required the pigeons to learn novel sequences of responses for various trios of illustrations. On half of the trials, subjects were given the opportunity to ask for “hints” as to the next correct response in a sequence. If the subjects completed a trial correctly without any hints, they were rewarded with food and light. If the subjects sought one or more hints during the course of completing a trial correctly, they were rewarded either with food and light, or with light only. Incorrect responses resulted in a time-out. We analyzed when the pigeons sought hints. Two of four pigeons sought hints in early sessions more often than in the final sessions of learning novel sequences, and the frequency of hint-seeking was inversely correlated with accuracy on those trials in which hints were unavailable. In Experiment 2, however, the pigeons failed to generalize their “hint-seeking” behavior in a novel situation involving visual search as the primary task. In sum, the results suggest that this species might have an ability to differentiate between their own cognitive states of knowing and not knowing, although the evidence is inconclusive.