The uncertainty response in animal-metacognition researchers

Kornell (2014, pp. 143-149) considers whether, and in what sense, animals may be considered metacognitive. He questions whether tests that rely on animals assessing their internal memory strength can provide useful data. He offers his own strategies for determining what internal cues animals use in making metacognitive judgments. We endorse his call for an increased focus on animals' metacognitive errors as true reflections of metacognitive states shorn of associative bases. We endorse a sharper focus on information-processing analyses of the executive or attentional level that metacognitive responses may occupy in animals' cognitive systems. Some of these analyses are being implemented in contemporary research, with positive results. Finally, we endorse the possibility that metacognition may not be an all-or-none thing, so that animals may share some facets--but not all facets--of metacognitive experience with humans. Kornell's interesting contribution makes clear that, in this area, the animal-metacognition literature needs further theoretical sharpening.