21 A. Efklides and P. Misailidi (eds.), Trends and Prospects in Metacognition Research, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-6546-2_2, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 1 Introduction Humans usually know when they do not know. This occurs in a variety of contexts. We know immediately that we cannot give good directions to a location when asked, because we do not know how to get there. We know we cannot offer guid- ance on the right amount of butter to add to a recipe. We know when we cannot tell whether our automobile will fit into a small parking spot, and we know when we cannot tell which hole has been punched out of a ballot. Thus, human decision- making often is guided by our certainty (or uncertainty) about the accuracy of our own thought processes. In essence, we recognize that sometimes the right decision choice is not to choose, or to slow down our response until we are certain, or to ask for more information. Our judgments are made on the basis of how confident we are that our information processing routines have provided enough information or the correct information for an accurate response. This ability, called metacognition, is sometimes defined as “thinking about thinking”, but it also refers to the monitoring of other, more basic “first-order” cognitive processes (Flavell, 1979). Thus, meta- cognition is a mental process that takes the results of a first-order process such as perception or memory activation and operates on the product of that first-order process for some second-order judgment (Proust, 2007). Human metacognition is intricately linked to important aspects of mind, including cognitive control, self-awareness, and consciousness. For this reason, it is often held as one of humans’ most sophisticated cognitive capacities, and it is widely accepted that humans are capable of metacognitive processing. Whenever humans reflect on what they know, re-evaluate their thought processes, or seek additional information, they are demonstrating their capacity for metacognition (Benjamin, Bjork, & Schwartz, 1998; Dunlosky & Nelson, 1992; Flavell, 1979; Koriat, 1993, 2007, 2008; Metcalfe & Shimamura, 1994; Nelson, 1992; Schwartz, 1994; M.J. Beran (*) Language Research Center, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302-3965, USA e-mail: mjberan@yahoo.com Chapter 2 Metacognition in Nonhumans: Methodological and Theoretical Issues in Uncertainty Monitoring Michael J. Beran, Justin J. Couchman, Mariana V. C. Coutinho, Joseph Boomer, and J. David Smith