Dostoevsky's "Underground Man" stated that twice-two is four. We know that to be true. But more importantly, we know that we know that to be true. But what about 300467 divided by 6.345? We know that we don't know that as well (unless you were Rain Man). This is our metacognition at work. "Thinking about thinking" - it can be seen as a defining aspect of our existence. You can ask almost anyone and they can tell you whether they know something or not. But that's just it, they can tell you. What about our little critter friends scampering about our attics, restaurant kitchens, and laboratories?
This year, A. Foote and J. Crystal - University of Georgia - published a paper that suggests that rats also have metacognition. They did this through what they called a "duration-discrimination test", which is a great name that perfectly describes the test. The rats had to differentiate between long and short sound cues. Correct answers being paired with large food rewards and wrong answers paired with nothing (starvation). The curious thing was that the rats were also given the choice of not taking the test at all which guaranteed the rat a much smaller reward.
What was shown was that when presented with more difficult tests (say a medium length sound cue) the rats would almost always choose to decline the test. They refused to gamble and instead went for the smaller prize.
This means that the rats know that they don't know the answer. If that wasn't true they'd just guess and bank on luck. This leads to some new questions. It was believed that only primates are capable of metacognition and self-awareness, but if rats can be shown to have metacognition... what about other animals of "higher" intelligence? Are rats conscious beings? Do rats know that they exist? Maybe "Ratatouille" isn't so farfetched?
I don't think there is such a thing as Rat-Zen but this was an interesting read and I'm glad for the work that Foote and Crystal did on this subject. Keep the good science coming.
I know that I don't know who's reading this blog right now but since I am 80 minutes away from a new year, I wish you the best 2008 of your lifetime.
Monday, December 31, 2007
The Zen of Rats
Labels: metacognition, rats, research, science, self awareness, zen
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2 comments:
Well Sama, you know my position on psychological studies like these already. To take the thought from Dr. Leif Finkel, the concepts of cognition (and by extension metacognition, memory) are technically human constructs. How validly they apply to the processes of complex biological structures is still questionable. Scientists, for example, once searched for areas of the brain responsible for consciousness to no avail. Thus the thinking about consciousness had to change from believing consciousness resulted from the culmination of neuronal signals to one area to the belief that consciousness is simply the amalgamation of several of our neuronal signals from all over the brain. How valid is it to name such an amalgamation "consciousness"... or give it any name to begin with? What I'm saying is that our way of thinking about the mind is largely based on the way philosophers have written about it over the years. Our language when discussing the mind is based on their work. Perhaps psychology's closely linked history with philosophy is counterproductive to the production of "good" science.
Then again, if you throw away these concepts, there's very little to work with... and psychology, an otherwise useful discipline, is left grasping at straws.
On the subject of rats, this study is interesting. If further studies were to reaffirm these findings (which are currently controversial), what effects would this finding have on the ethics involved in animal research, seeing as how rats are by far the most utilized animals in scientific research. I mean, do we place their use on the level of "seriousness" as that of primates?
Good post, btw... I guess you should teach us (JMB) a thing or two about blog-writing :)
Joester I'm in full agreement with your first two paragraphs.
As for putting rats on the same level as primates, I doubt that will ever happen (read: no Rat-Zen). If anything, I think the rat will just be used even more in this field of study because, if this metacognition "stuff" is backed by more studies, we now have a new window into understanding more about human psychology.
As for writing blogs: pick a topic, report on it, and keep it short.
That's the magic recipe. :)
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