Drawing the line on metacognition.
Only two of the many experiments described by Smith et al., as indicating metacognitive ability in nonhuman animals, involved metacognition as understood in the human literature. Of these, one gave negative results. In the other, one of two rhesus monkeys provided data suggesting that he might have metacognitive ability. The conjecture that any nonhuman animals have metacognitive ability is, therefore, tenuous.
Metcalfe
Janet
J
Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 Metcalfe@Columbia.edu http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/metcalfe/jm.html.