%0 Journal Article
%A Allritz, Matthias
%A McEwen, Emma Suvi
%A Call, Josep
%+ Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
%T Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) show subtle signs of uncertainty when choices are more difficult : 
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0009-0069-1
%R 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104766
%7 2021-09
%D 2021
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X 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.   
%K Chimpanzees; Feelings of uncertainty; Procedural metacognition; Transitive inference; Epistemic emotion
%J Cognition
%V 214
%] 104766
%I Elsevier
%C Amsterdam
%@ 0010-0277