Commentary on Smith, J. D.; Shields, W. E. & Washburn, D. A.
Abstract: 111 words
Main Text: 558 words
References: 210 words
Total Text: 945 words
If metacognition exists in other species, how does it develop?
Ruth Campos
Psychology Department
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Departamento de Psicología Básica. Facultad de Psicología. Universidad Autónoma
de Madrid
Madrid, 28049
34 913978572
Spain
ruth.campos@uam.es
Annette Karmiloff Smith
Neurocognitive Development Unit
Institute of Child Health
Neurocognitive Development Unit. Institute of Child Health. 30 Guildford
Street.
London, WC1N 1EH
United Kingdom
44 0207 905 2754
a.karmilof-smith@ich.ucl.ac.uk
http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/units/ncdu/NDU_homepage.htm
Abstract
In
this commentary, we raise two issues.
First, we argue that in any species, the comparative study of
metacognitive abilities must be
approached from a developmental perspective and not solely from the
adult end state. This makes it possible to explore the trajectories by which
different species reach their phenotypic outcome and whether different
cognitive systems interact over developmental time. Second, using our research comparing different genetic
disorders in humans, we challenge the
authors’ claim that it is unparsimonious
to interpret the same performance in humans and animals in qualitatively
different ways, because even the same overt behaviour in different groups of
humans can be sustained by different underlying
cognitive processes.
Text1
Smith,
Shields and Washburn are to be particularly commended for their synthesis of
the research on animal metacognitive abilities and their stimulating attempt to
establish a psychological interpretation of animal metacognitive performance
via tasks tapping uncertainty monitoring.
We
are particularly concerned with the implications
that the authors’ proposal has
for the study of the progressive development of metacognitive abilities in
humans as compared to other species.
We note that the authors seem to accept uncritically the fact that all
the participants in the various studies they reviewed are adults. In fact, this tends to be the general
case in comparative psychology, even when another adult species is directly
compared with human infants or children, be it in the domain of metacognition
or other cognitive abilities. Such
an approach is, in our view, regrettable because, to understand the phenotypic
outcome of any species (including human), it is vital to trace the
developmental trajectory by which the ability is achieved (Karmiloff-Smith,
1998; Paterson et al., 1999; Piaget, 1952). Only then can one judge if similar overt behaviour is
underpinned by similar underlying cognitive processes. Taking a developmental
perspective also makes it possible to ascertain whether metacognitive
capacities interact over developmental time with other cognitive processes and
whether this interaction is analogous in humans and other species. In other
words, we believe that cross-species comparisons must involve a developmental
perspective both theoretically and empirically. This has proven crucial in the study of metacognitive
abilities in humans (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Perner, 1991). Metacognition is not
an all or none process. It
develops very progressively in human children. The question that remains is
whether this progressive development is the case for those species that the
authors claim to display aspects of metacognition.
Our
second point concerns the issue of parsimony. Normally, of course, one would want to consider similar
behaviour between different groups (two groups of humans or comparing humans
with other species) as indicating similar cognitive processes. However, our work on normal development
has demonstrated that at different ages children may display the same overt
behaviour which is none the less underpinned by very different internal
representations (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992).
And studies of atypical development suggest that, even when a clinical
group attains the same behavioural scores as normal controls, the behaviours
are often sustained by very different cognitive and brain processes in the two
groups (Grice et al., 2001; Karmiloff-Smith, 1998). For example, individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare
genetic disorder (Donnai & Karmiloff-Smith, 2000), display scores in the
normal range on some face processing tasks. However, in-depth studies revealed that while normal
controls used configural processing, the participants with WS employed
componential processing when looking at faces (Deruelle et al., 1999;
Karmiloff-Smith, 1998). A second
example comes from reading. Normal
and WS participants, individually matched on reading scores, turned out to
display very different strategies when learning to read new words, suggesting
that each group had reached their reading scores via different developmental
trajectories (Laing et al., 2001).
Such data reveal the need for caution when evaluating similar overt
behaviour both within and across species. Would we want to equate parrot speech
to human language?
In
our view, the answers to both the issues we have raised in this commentary
should be sought in the detailed study of the developmental trajectories that
lead to the metacognitive abilities that any species displays.
References
Deruelle,
C., Mancini, J., Livet, M. O., Casse-Perrot, C. & de Schonen, S. (1999).
Configural and local processing of faces in
children with Williams syndrome. Brain
and Cognition, 41, 276-298.
Donnai,
D. & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2000). Williams syndrome: From genotype through
to the cognitive phenotype. American Journal of Medical Genetics: Seminars
in Medical Genetics. 97 (2), 164-171.
Grice,
S., Spratling, M.W., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Halit, H., Csibra, G., de Haan, M.,
& Johnson, M.H. (2001). Disordered visual processing and oscillatory brain
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S.J., Brown, J. H. , Gsödl, M. K. , Johnson, M. H. & Karmiloff-Smith, A.
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Piaget,
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