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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 17, 2026

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons (Columba Livia)
06:14

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons (Columba Livia)

Published on: September 7, 2018

Information-seeking behavior: exploring metacognitive control in pigeons.

Leyre Castro1, Edward A Wasserman

  • 1Department of Psychology, The University of Iowa, E11 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. leyre-castroruiz@uiowa.edu

Animal Cognition
|October 16, 2012
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Pigeons demonstrated metacognitive control by seeking more information when tasks became harder. This adaptive information-seeking behavior, previously seen mainly in primates, suggests complex cognitive abilities in birds.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Animal Behavior
  • Comparative Psychology

Background:

  • Metacognitive control involves seeking information when current knowledge is insufficient for problem-solving.
  • Information-seeking behavior is well-documented in primates but less clear in non-primates.
  • Investigating metacognition in non-primate species can broaden our understanding of cognitive evolution.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether pigeons exhibit metacognitive control through information-seeking behavior.
  • To assess if pigeons adjust their information-seeking strategies based on task difficulty.
  • To explore the flexibility of this behavior in novel discrimination tasks.

Main Methods:

  • Pigeons were trained on visual discrimination tasks of varying difficulty (2, 4, or 12 items).
  • A novel paradigm allowed pigeons to choose between an 'Information' button (simplifying the task) or a 'Go' button (proceeding to response).
  • The 'Information' button's utility was tested on new brightness and size discrimination tasks.

Main Results:

  • Pigeons increasingly chose the 'Information' button as task difficulty rose.
  • Pigeons demonstrated prompt and appropriate transfer of the 'Information' button strategy to new discrimination tasks.
  • The results objectively show complex, flexible, and adaptive information-seeking behavior.

Conclusions:

  • Pigeons exhibit adaptive information-seeking behavior analogous to metacognitive control.
  • This study provides compelling evidence for metacognitive abilities in a non-primate species.
  • The findings challenge previous assumptions about the distribution of complex cognitive control across species.