Language Research Center, Georgia State University. Atlanta, GA 30302, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2013 May;24(5):660-6. doi: 10.1177/0956797612458936. Epub 2013 Mar 18.
Metacognition can be defined as knowing what one knows, and the question of whether nonhuman animals are metacognitive has driven an intense debate. We tested 3 language-trained chimpanzees in an information-seeking task in which the identity of a food item was the critical piece of information needed to obtain the food. The chimpanzees could either report the identity of the food immediately or first check a container in which the food had been hidden. In two experiments, the chimpanzees were significantly more likely to visit the container first on trials in which they could not know its contents but were more likely to just name the food item without looking into the container on trials in which they had seen its contents. Thus, chimpanzees showed efficient information-seeking behavior that suggested they knew what they had or had not already seen when it was time to name a hidden item.
元认知可以被定义为知道自己知道什么，而关于非人类动物是否具有元认知的问题引发了激烈的争论。我们在一个信息寻求任务中测试了 3 只受过语言训练的黑猩猩，在这个任务中，食物的身份是获得食物所需的关键信息。黑猩猩可以立即报告食物的身份，或者先检查一个藏有食物的容器。在两项实验中，当黑猩猩无法知道容器内的内容时，它们更有可能先去查看容器；而当它们已经看到过容器内的内容时，它们更有可能只是直接说出食物的名称，而不去查看容器。因此，黑猩猩表现出了有效的信息寻求行为，这表明它们在需要说出隐藏物品的名称时，知道自己已经看到或没有看到过什么。
