一項研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，和人類類似,，當(dāng)蜜蜂缺乏足夠的信息用于解決一個問題的時候,，它們會避免困難的決定。
科研人員長久以來知道人類依賴于元認(rèn)知的力量在做出一個決定之前去衡量他們對于一個決定的確定程度,，但是不清楚動物是否有類似的能力,。
Clint Perry 和Andrew Barron通過評估蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）在一個視覺分辨任務(wù)中如何對基于有限信息的決定做出響應(yīng)，從而探索了這個問題,。這組作者訓(xùn)練了自由飛行的蜜蜂進(jìn)入一個兩室結(jié)構(gòu),，在每一個室內(nèi)提供了各種形狀、尺寸,、顏色和位置的兩種類型的目標(biāo)——一個甜的“獎賞”和一個苦的“懲罰”,。在
難度有變化的一系列的實驗中，這些蜜蜂選擇從這些目標(biāo)中定位那個甜的獎賞,。這些蜜蜂因為正確的選擇而得到獎賞,，因為錯誤的選擇而得到懲罰，或者通過退出試驗而避免選擇,。這些發(fā)現(xiàn)揭示出了當(dāng)缺乏足夠的信息的時候,，蜜蜂優(yōu)先選擇退出困難的試驗，因此就改善了它們的成功率,。
這組作者說,，這項研究提示甚至是無脊椎動物也可能有能力做出復(fù)雜而具有適應(yīng)性的決定。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推薦的英文摘要
Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America doi: 10.1073/pnas.1314571110
Honey bees selectively avoid difficult choices
Clint J. Perry and Andrew B. Barron1
Human decision-making strategies are strongly influenced by an awareness of certainty or uncertainty (a form of metacognition) to increase the chances of making a right choice. Humans seek more information and defer choosing when they realize they have insufficient information to make an accurate decision,， but whether animals are aware of uncertainty is currently highly contentious. To explore this issue,， we examined how honey bees (Apis mellifera) responded to a visual discrimination task that varied in difficulty between trials. Free-flying bees were rewarded for a correct choice， punished for an incorrect choice,， or could avoid choosing by exiting the trial (opting out). Bees opted out more often on difficult trials,， and opting out improved their proportion of successful trials. Bees could also transfer the concept of opting out to a novel task. Our data show that bees selectively avoid difficult tasks they lack the information to solve. This finding has been considered as evidence that nonhuman animals can assess the certainty of a predicted outcome， and bees’ performance was comparable to that of primates in a similar paradigm. We discuss whether these behavioral results prove bees react to uncertainty or whether associative mechanisms can explain such findings. To better frame metacognition as an issue for neurobiological investigation,， we propose a neurobiological hypothesis of uncertainty monitoring based on the known circuitry of the honey bee brain.
