Information-seeking behavior: exploring metacognitive control in pigeons
Information-seeking behavior: exploring metacognitive control in pigeons
复制标题
DOI：
10.1007/s10071-012-0569-8
复制
发表时间：
2013-03-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.7
通讯作者：
Wasserman, Edward A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Castro, Leyre;Wasserman, Edward A.
如果生物体在解决问题的可用信息不足时寻求额外信息，则可能发生元生物控制。这种信息寻求行为在灵长类动物中已有记载，但在非灵长类动物中类似行为的证据不太令人信服。在我们的研究中，我们采用了一种新的方法。我们给鸽子提供了不同难度的视觉辨别能力，在特殊的测试试验中，我们给鸽子提供了使辨别能力更容易的机会。我们最初训练鸽子区分相同和不同的视觉阵列，每个视觉阵列包含12个项目（低难度），4个项目（中等难度）或2个项目（高难度）。我们后来提供了一个“信息”按钮，鸽子可以啄来增加数组中的项目数量，从而使识别更容易，再加上一个“开始”按钮，当啄时，只允许鸽子进行最终的识别反应。重要的是，随着任务难度的增加，我们的鸽子对“信息”按钮的选择也在增加。同时，我们的一些鸽子也显示出使用“信息”按钮的及时和适当的转移，以帮助他们完成全新的亮度和大小辨别任务。推测鸽子的私人心理状态的内容可能是没有根据的，但我们的鸽子确实客观地表现出了一种复杂的，灵活的，适应性的信息寻求行为，被认为是涉及元认知控制。
Metacognitive control may occur if an organism seeks additional information when the available information for solving a problem is inadequate. Such information-seeking behavior has been documented in primates, but evidence of analogous behavior is less convincing in non-primates. In our study, we adopted a novel methodological approach. We presented pigeons with visual discriminations of varying levels of difficulty, and on special testing trials, we gave the birds the opportunity of making the discrimination easier. We initially trained pigeons on a discrimination between same and different visual arrays, each containing 12 items (low difficulty), 4 items (intermediate difficulty), or 2 items (high difficulty). We later provided an "Information" button that the pigeons could peck to increase the number of items in the arrays, thereby making the discrimination easier, plus a "Go" button which, when pecked, simply allowed the pigeons to proceed to their final discriminative response. Critically, our pigeons' choice of the "Information" button increased as the difficulty of the task increased. As well, some of our pigeons showed evidence of prompt and appropriate transfer of using the "Information" button to help them perform brand-new brightness and size discrimination tasks. Speculation as to the contents of pigeons' private mental states may be unwarranted, but our pigeons did objectively exhibit the kind of complex, flexible, and adaptive information-seeking behavior that is deemed to be involved in metacognitive control.