Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
Science Daily - in an apparent three month delay - has an interesting report about research designed to address that question. Basically, a monkey was shown a picture, then shown eight pictures with the original picture included and the monkey was suppose to choose which of the eight was the original. Following that the monkey was supposed to choose either a high risk bet (indicating confidence in their choice) or a low risk bet:
The test used touch-screen technology and a multiple-choice format. Six novel photographs were presented at the beginning of each trial, one at a time. One photograph was selected at random and then displayed simultaneously with 8 novel photographs. The monkey's task was to select the photograph that appeared at the beginning of the trial. The monkey then evaluated the accuracy of its choice by selecting a high and a low-risk icon presented on the screen. It earned a large reward if it selected the high-risk icon after a correct response (3 tokens dropped into a bank displayed on the video monitor).
The results of the research was published in the January issue of Psychological Science, here is the abstract:
Metacognition is knowledge that can be expressed as confidence judgments about what one knows (monitoring) and by strategies for learning what one does not know (control). Although there is a substantial literature on cognitive processes in animals, little is known about their metacognitive abilities. Here we show that rhesus macaques, trained previously to make retrospective confidence judgments about their performance on perceptual tasks, transferred that ability immediately to a new perceptual task and to a working memory task. We also show that monkeys can learn to request "hints" when they are given problems that they would otherwise have to solve by trial and error. This study demonstrates, for the first time, that nonhuman primates share with humans the ability to monitor and transfer their metacognitive ability both within and between different cognitive tasks, and to seek new knowledge on a need-to-know basis.
Comments
Interesting. To go along with the topic of nonhuman primates sharing abilities with humans, there's a nice article in the NY Times summarizing many of the similarities we have with chimps. Pretty cool.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17chimp.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=science
Posted by: ricky | April 21, 2007 6:12 PM
I'm always tickled when a certain intellectual skill once thought to be held exclusively by humans is found in non-human animals. We don't have the monopoly on using tools, having sex for non-reproductive purposes, self-consciousness, or metacognition. Across species, intelligence seems to exist on a continuum, not in discrete steps defined by individual skills and abilities.
Posted by: Rebecca C. | April 21, 2007 11:01 PM
See too:
Suda-King C. Do orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) know when they do not remember? Anim Cogn. 2007 Apr 17.
Foote AL, Crystal JD. Metacognition in the rat.
Curr Biol. 2007 Mar 20.
Dere E, Kart-Teke E, Huston JP, De Souza Silva MA. The case for episodic memory in animals. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2006.
Paukner A, Anderson JR, Fujita K. Redundant food searches by capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella): a failure of metacognition? Anim Cogn. 2006 Apr.
Hampton RR, Zivin A, Murray EA. Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) discriminate between knowing and not knowing and collect information as needed before acting. Anim Cogn. 2004 Oct.
Shields WE, Smith JD, Washburn DA. Uncertain responses by humans and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) in a psychophysical same-different task. J Exp Psychol Gen. 1997 Jun.
Posted by: Rick Bogle | April 22, 2007 3:44 PM