Confidence Judgments and Metacognition in Comparative and Developmental Perspective

人们经常评估他们知道什么和不知道什么。为了做出好的决定，他们会寻找自己缺乏的信息，当他们不确定的时候，他们会犹豫，直到有了新的信息，或者通过仔细地重新考虑一个问题或问题才确定下来。这种对一个人的感知、记忆和知识状态的监控对许多智力和教育活动至关重要——这种能力被称为元认知。对非语言动物的人类元认知前体的研究是比较研究的一个重点领域，而对儿童元认知出现的研究是发展研究的一个重点。该项目将回答跨物种和年龄范围的人类元认知能力的新问题，培养对教育、决策和智力功能至关重要的认知能力的新见解。这种类型的研究引起了媒体和公众的极大兴趣，并将通过出版物、演讲、纪录片和史密森尼国家动物园正在进行的心理学研究的现场演示等各种形式直接向公众展示。本科生、研究生和博士后将通过这项研究计划发展他们作为研究人员、教师和未来导师的技能，并强调在这项研究中未被充分代表的群体的参与。该项目的任务将产生成人、儿童和非人类灵长类动物认知监测的比较数据。这些任务将评估这些群体如何对他们知道或不知道的事情表现出信心，如何在需要的时候调整行为以寻求信息，以及如何灵活地处理不同程度的感知经验、记忆和知识。这些数据将说明跨物种和跨发展的元认知控制出现的关键方面。这些非侵入性的行为研究将产生元认知的动物模型，扩大研究人员可用的范式范围，阐明儿童元认知的早期根源，潜在地支持语言延迟或自闭症儿童的元认知研究，并有助于在这种能力受损的人群中训练元认知。

People regularly assess what they do and do not know. They seek information that they lack for making good decisions, and they hesitate when they are unsure until certainty arrives through new information, or through careful reconsideration of a problem or question. This monitoring of one's perceptions, memories, and knowledge states is critical to many intellectual and educational activities - this capacity is called metacognition. The study of the precursors to human metacognition in nonverbal animals is a strong area of focus in comparative research, and the study of the emergence of metacognition in children is a strong focus of developmental research. This project will answer new questions of metacognitive competence across species and age ranges in humans, fostering new insights into a cognitive capacity that is critical to education, decision-making, and intellectual functioning. This type of research draws great interest from the media and the public, and will be presented directly to the public through various forms such as publications, presentations, documentaries, and live demonstrations of psychological research in progress at the Smithsonian's National Zoo. Undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral associates will develop their skills as researchers, teachers, and future mentors through this research program, with a strong emphasis on the participation of underrepresented groups in this research. The tasks in this project will generate comparative data of cognitive monitoring by human adults, children, and nonhuman primates. The tasks will assess how these groups demonstrate confidence in what they know or do not know, adjust behavior to seek information when it is needed, and flexibly deal with varying degrees of perceptual experience, memory, and knowledge. The data will illustrate key aspects of the emergence of metacognitive control across species and across development. These non-invasive, behavioral studies will generate animal models for metacognition, expand the range of paradigms available to researchers, illuminate the early roots of metacognition in children, potentially support the study of metacognition in language-delayed or autistic children, and help ground efforts to train metacognition in populations that show impairment in this ability.