Cashing out: The decisional flexibility of uncertainty responses in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and humans (Homo sapiens).

ABSTRACT: Researchers are exploring whether animals share with humans something like a metacognitive capacity. Though some results point to human-animal continuities in this domain, they face the dominant criticism that animals' performances might be associative. A persistent problem is that animal-metacognition paradigms present static environments of risk and reward that may foster inflexible and conditioned responding. Those environments do not challenge animals to show the flexibility in their decision strategies that could indicate an antecedent capacity to metacognition. Accordingly, we tested macaques and humans on an uncertainty-monitoring paradigm in which risk changed dynamically. Participants classified stimuli of different difficulties while also choosing when to use a cashout response t

SUBMITTER: Zakrzewski AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4280665 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature