Rats engage in “metacognition”: They know what they don’t know

Scientists have long known that humans, higher primates, dolphins and some birds demonstrate “metacognition” — the ability to think about thinking. We know when we know something, and we also know when we don’t know something.

But now a study has shown that even rats can demonstrate metacognition. Jonathon Crystal, a neuroscientist at the University of Georgia at Athens, working with his student Alison Foote, figured out a clever experiment to test rats’ awareness of their thinking. They presented the rats with a “sound classification” test: They trained the rats to associate a long, 8-second burst of static with pushing one particular lever, and then trained them to associate a short, 2-second burst of static with a different lever. They’d play one of the two sounds, and if the rats pushed the correct lever, they’d get six food pellets; pushing the wrong lever got them nothing. The rats quickly learned to distinguish the two sounds by duration, and ate tons of pellets.

The scientists also offered the rats another opportunity for food: When they heard a burst of static, they could simply stick their noses in a food trough and get half the reward — three pellets. But the rats preferred to push the levers, because they were good at distinguishing the two sounds, and it gave them a much bigger reward.

Then things got interesting. The scientists made the test harder. They started playing bursts of static that were of intermediate length — four seconds, five seconds, six seconds — and thus harder to classify as “long” or “short”. Suddenly, the rats decided to forgo the test and simply stick their noses in the food trough to get the smaller reward. Apparently, the rats realized that they were now unlikely to pass this much-harder test, so they skipped it. As the scientists put it in a press release:

“Our research showed that the rats know when they don’t know the answer to a question,” said Crystal.

I confess I find it mindblowing how often we discover the complexity of the mental lives of seemingly dumb animals. Octopuses in captivity play complex games to alleviate boredom; grey parrots grasp the concept of zero; and now rats demonstrate a level of self-awareness about their cognitive limitations that many humans don’t possess.


blog comments powered by Disqus

Search This Site


Bio:

I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

More of Me

Twitter
Tumblr
Flickr


Recent Entries

The “Milky Way Transit Authority” map

Should automobile software be open-sourced?

My Bookforum review of Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget”

Molecular secrets of the “iron-plated snail”

Garry Kasparov, cyborg

» visit the Collision Detection archives

Clive Thompson's Tumblr
a bunch of stuff

January 31, 2010 » 07:29 PM
V. A. To me death seems to be an evil.
M. What, to those who are al­ready dead? or to those who must die?
A. To both.
M. It is a mis­ery, then, be­cause an evil?
A. Cer­tain­ly.
M. Then those who have al­ready died, and those who have still got to die, are both mis­er­able?
A. So it ap­pears to me.
M. Then all are mis­er­able?
A. Ev­ery one.

January 24, 2010 » 03:22 PM

One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though. (via Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009

)

January 15, 2010 » 01:36 PM

BEYOND AWESOME. They are announcing a recall of the Plush Uterus “due to a potential choking hazard for children”. To apply for it, “Please send an email to the address below with the subject line, ‘UTERUS OPT OUT’”.

January 14, 2010 » 10:04 PM

“To order, please TYPE “YES” IN CHECKBOX BELOW TO AGREE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS PLUSH MUST BE KEPT AWAY FROM KIDS (it is a sex organ, after all). If it is not checked, WE WILL NOT SEND THE UTERUS.” (via @ibogost)

January 11, 2010 » 01:45 PM

I watched Space: 1999 back in the day, but I swear to god I do not remember this scene.

» visit my Tumblr

Recent Comments

Photos

» see all of my photos on Flickr

Collision Detection: A Blog by Clive Thompson