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Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) show subtle signs of uncertainty when choices are more difficult

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Date
09/2021
Author
Allritz, Matthias
McEwen, Emma Suvi
Call, Josep
Funder
European Research Council
Grant ID
609819
Keywords
Chimpanzees
Epistemic emotions
Feelings of uncertainty
Procedural metacognition
Transitive inference
QL Zoology
NDAS
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Abstract
Humans can tell when they find a task difficult. Subtle uncertainty behaviors like changes in motor speed and muscle tension precede and affect these experiences. Theories of animal metacognition likewise stress the importance of endogenous signals of uncertainty as cues that motivate metacognitive behaviors. However, while researchers have investigated second-order behaviors like information seeking and declining difficult trials in nonhuman animals, they have devoted little attention to the behaviors that express the cognitive conflict that gives rise to such behaviors in the first place. Here we explored whether three chimpanzees would, like humans, show hand wavering more when faced with more difficult choices in a touch screen transitive inference task. While accuracy was very high across all conditions, all chimpanzees wavered more frequently in trials that were objectively more difficult, demonstrating a signature behavior which accompanies experiences of difficulty in humans. This lends plausibility to the idea that feelings of uncertainty, like other emotions, can be studied in nonhuman animals. We propose to routinely assess uncertainty behaviors to inform models of procedural metacognition in nonhuman animals.
Citation
Allritz , M , McEwen , E S & Call , J 2021 , ' Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) show subtle signs of uncertainty when choices are more difficult ' , Cognition , vol. 214 , 104766 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104766
Publication
Cognition
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104766
ISSN
0010-0277
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Description
This research was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program ( FP7/2007-2013 )/ERC grant agreement no 609819, SOMICS.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027721001852?via%3Dihub#s0100
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/23406

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