Do birds (pigeons and bantams) know how confident they are of their perceptual decisions?
Do birds (pigeons and bantams) know how confident they are of their perceptual decisions?
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DOI：
10.1007/s10071-010-0345-6
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发表时间：
2011-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.7
通讯作者：
Fujita, Kazuo
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Nakamura, Noriyuki;Watanabe, Sota;Fujita, Kazuo
人们知道恒河猴可以通过打赌程序来识别他们对即时感知和认知决策的信心（Son和Kornell在《认知缺失的一环：自我反思意识的起源》）。牛津大学出版社，纽约，第296-320,2005；《心理科学》18:64-71,2007)。在本报告中，我们研究了这种能力是否在两种鸟类（鸽子和班塔姆）中共享，以了解这种元认知能力在动物中有多普遍。我们训练鸽子和班塔木在显示在触敏显示器上的其他（干扰物）中寻找不同颜色的磁盘（目标）。在测试中，受试者被要求在视觉搜索之后从“风险”和“安全”两个信心图标中选择一个。在视觉搜索中，在正确的反应（即，啄目标）之后，啄“风险”图标会被食物和光线加强，而在错误的反应（即，啄干扰物）之后，会导致超时。不管视觉搜索结果如何，轻啄“安全”图标总是会被食物和光线强化，或者只会被光线强化。在所有6只鸽子和2只班塔姆中，错误回答后的“安全”选择百分比高于正确回答后的“安全”选择百分比。这种行为在一些实验对象中被推广到新的刺激，甚至在鸽子中被推广到新的线分类任务。这些结果表明，这两种远亲鸟类具有共同的元认知能力，使它们能够识别对其即时感知决策的信心。
Rhesus monkeys are known to recognize confidence about their immediate perceptual and cognitive decisions by using a betting procedure (Son and Kornell in The missing link in cognition: origins of self-reflective consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 296-320, 2005; Kornell et al. in Psychol Sci 18:64-71, 2007). In this report, we examined whether this ability is shared in two avian species (pigeons and bantams) in order to know how widespread this metacognitive ability is among animals. We trained pigeons and bantams to search for a differently colored disk (target) among others (distracters) displayed on a touch-sensitive monitor. In test, the subjects were required to choose one of two confidence icons, "risk" and "safe", after the visual search. A peck at the "risk" icon after a correct response in the visual search (i.e., a peck at the target) was reinforced by food and light, while that after an incorrect response (i.e., a peck at a distracter) resulted in a timeout. A peck at the "safe" icon was always reinforced by food and light, or by light only, regardless of the visual search result. The percentages of "safe" choices after incorrect responses were higher than after correct responses in all six pigeons and two of three bantams. This behavior generalized to novel stimuli in some subjects, and even to a novel line-classification task in a pigeon. These results suggest that these two distantly related avian species have in common a metacognitive ability that allows them to recognize confidence about their immediate perceptual decisions.