ArticleCognition2021
Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) show subtle signs of uncertainty when choices are more difficult.
Article in Cognition, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- EVApeCognition: An 18-Year Dataset of Great Ape Cognition.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Metacognition in nonhuman primates: a review of current knowledge.Primates; journal of primatology · 2025Review
- Goffin's cockatoos use object mass but not balance cues when making object transport decisions.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) strategically manipulate their environment to deny conspecifics access to food.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Don't look back on failure: spontaneous uncertainty monitoring in chimpanzees.Learning & behavior · 2023Article
- Social cognition and metacognition in great apes: a theory.Animal cognition · 2023Review
- Chimpanzees (Science advances · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans can tell when they find a task difficult. Subtle uncertainty behaviors like changes in motor speed and muscle tension precede and affect these experiences. Theories of animal metacognition likewise stress the importance of endogenous signals of uncertainty as cues that motivate metacognitive behaviors. However, while researchers have investigated second-order behaviors like information seeking and declining difficult trials in nonhuman animals, they have devoted little attention to the behaviors that express the cognitive conflict that gives rise to such behaviors in the first place. Here we explored whether three chimpanzees would, like humans, show hand wavering more when faced with more difficult choices in a touch screen transitive inference task. While accuracy was very high across all conditions, all chimpanzees wavered more frequently in trials that were objectively more difficult, demonstrating a signature behavior which accompanies experiences of difficulty in humans. This lends plausibility to the idea that feelings of uncertainty, like other emotions, can be studied in nonhuman animals. We propose to routinely assess uncertainty behaviors to inform models of procedural metacognition in nonhuman animals.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.