Abstract
Over the last decade, the metacognitive abilities of nonhuman primates and the developmental emergence of metacognition in children have become topics of increasing research interest. In the current study, the performance of three adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes; Experiment 1) and forty-four 3.5- and 5.5-year-old human children (Experiment 2) was assessed on a behavioral search paradigm designed to assess metacognition. Subjects either directly observed the baiting of a large reward into one cup among an array of four, or had the baiting occluded from their view. In half of the trials, subjects were also presented with an additional distinctive cup that was always visibly baited with a small reward. This cup allowed subjects the opportunity to escape from making a guess about the location of the bigger reward. All three chimpanzees and both age groups of children selected the escape cup more often when the baiting of the large reward was concealed, compared to when it was visible. This demonstrates that both species can selectively choose a guaranteed smaller reward when they do not know the location of a larger reward and provides insight into the development of metacognition.
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Notes
Cassie received fewer warm-up trials because his experimental sessions ran over 2 days, rather than three, and each session commenced with such trials.
Holly only received one set of warm-up trials because her testing sessions continued on from each other without breaks within 1 day.
If the subject simply guessed the location of the large reward among the four red cups, ignoring the escape cup, in 16 trials, he/she would likely have received eight grapes at a .25 probability level of success by chance. If he/she guessed among all five cups indiscriminately, he would receive 10 grapes according to the .20 chance probability. However, if the subject chose the escape cup on every available trial, as Ockie did, he/she would receive 16 grapes.
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Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the kind and generous help offered us by the staff of the Rockhampton Botanical and Zoological Gardens, and its coordinator Graeme Strachan. Subsequent to our data collection, one of our participants, Ockie, passed away from natural causes. As a willing and interested participant across multiple studies, we take this opportunity to acknowledge his contribution to our discipline and for broadening our understanding of primate cognition. He will be missed. We also thank David Butler and Cameron Turner for their assistance in data collection, Jeremy Nash for his role in reliability coding, and Andrew Hill for construction of the apparatus. This study was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP140101410).
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval for human participants
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the Declaration of Helsinki 1964 and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Ethical approval for animal subjects
All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. All procedures performed in studies involving animals were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution or practice at which the studies were conducted.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants and their guardians included in the study.
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Neldner, K., Collier-Baker, E. & Nielsen, M. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and human children (Homo sapiens) know when they are ignorant about the location of food. Anim Cogn 18, 683–699 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-015-0836-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-015-0836-6