title: Dissociating uncertainty responses and reinforcement signals in the comparative study of uncertainty monitoring.
abstract: Although researchers are exploring animals' capacity for monitoring their states of uncertainty, the use of some paradigms allows the criticism that animals map avoidance responses to error-causing stimuli not because of uncertainty monitored but because of feedback signals and stimulus aversion. The authors addressed this criticism with an uncertainty-monitoring task in which participants completed blocks of trials with feedback deferred so that they could not associate reinforcement signals to particular stimuli or stimulus-response pairs. Humans and 1 of 2 monkeys were able to make cognitive, decisional uncertainty responses that were independent of feedback or reinforcement history within a task. This finding unifies the comparative literature on uncertainty monitoring. The dissociation of performance from reinforcement has theoretical implications, and the deferred-feedback technique has many applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. psysmith@buffalo.edu
authors.forename: J David
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Beran
authors.forename: Joshua S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Redford
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Washburn
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007721:Knowledge of Results, Psychological; D008253:Macaca mulatta / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D009518:New York; D011897:Random Allocation; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012647:Self-Assessment; D035501:Uncertainty