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This chapter situates the dispute over the metacognitive capacities of non-human animals in the context of wider debates about the phylogeny of metarepresentational abilities. This chapter clarifies the nature of the dispute, before contrasting two different accounts of the evolution of metarepresentation. One is first-person-based, claiming that it emerged initially for purposes of metacognitive monitoring and control. The other is social in nature, claiming that metarepresentation evolved initially to monitor the mental states of others. These accounts make differing predictions about what we should expect to find in non-human animals: the former predicts that metacognitive capacities in creatures incapable of equivalent forms of mindreading should be found, whereas the latter predicts that they should not. The chapter elaborates and defend the latter form of account, drawing especially on what is known about decision-making and metacognition in humans. In doing so the chapter shows that so-called ‘uncertainty-monitoring’ data from monkeys can just as well be explained in non-metarepresentational affective terms, as might be predicted by the social-evolutionary account.

Humans have the ability to monitor their own cognition and change their behaviour based on information gleaned from that monitoring. We think about our own thinking, and are often fully aware of our mental states. This metacognitive ability is closely linked to, and may be the basis for, human consciousness.

Humans have the ability to monitor their own cognition and change their behaviour based on information gleaned from that monitoring. We think about our own thinking, and are often fully aware of our mental states. This metacognitive ability is closely linked to, and may be the basis for, human consciousness. This chapter states that some non-human animals (hereafter, animals) may have a similar ability to monitor their own cognition, though the exact nature of this ability is unknown. The chapter reviews several perceptual, psychophysical, and memory experiments that show animals apparently perceiving and using information about their own mental states. Animal performance in these tasks shows interesting parallels to human performance. The chapter also reviews some problems with this evidence, and discuss ways that researchers have sought to overcome those problems. The chapter states that, taken as a whole, the evidence strongly indicates that some animals have metaminds — minds capable of understanding not only perceptual information, but also information about their own mental states.

Over the last decade, studies on metacognition have been playing an increasingly prominent role in the field of animal cognition. Although a growing number of studies have documented responses consistent with metacognition, currently there is some debate about their proper interpretation. This chapter reviews the evidence that has accumulated in the last decade in the so-called information-seeking paradigm, which involves confronting subjects with two or more containers where food can be hidden. Researchers have manipulated several variables including the visibility of the baiting, the food type, and the time since the baiting took place. To get the food, subjects have to select the baited container but before they do so, they can, if they wish, look inside the container to verify its contents. Although the initial results could be explained as a result of random search, response competition, or perceiving anxiety rather than monitoring memories, recent findings have in turn challenged each of these alternative explanations. Information seeking in the great apes can be characterized as targeted (i.e. individuals do not search randomly), integrated (i.e. individuals can incorporate multiple types of information into their decision, including information derived by inference), and facultative (i.e. subjects can increase or decrease their searches depending on the information that they possess and the cost of searching and/or choosing wrongly). These findings, together with those from other metacognition paradigms, suggest that the great apes have some access to the causes of their uncertainty, and they can flexibly deploy means to remedy this situation.