Metacognitive regulation of cognitive control to adjust choice accuracy in rhesus macaques

Making the best choice in one situation is critical, but it relies on limited cognitive capacities. Numerous animal species adjust the amount of cognitive resources allocated to a decision using a trade-off between speed and accuracy, where decision time corresponds to an investment of cognitive control, which scales with the expected increase in reward. In humans, recent studies indicate that control allocation is regulated not only based upon its potential benefits, but also upon its potential cost, through a metacognitive monitoring process.

Is it the case in other primates? We addressed this issue in rhesus monkeys with a detailed analysis of the relation among choice accuracy, choice difficulty and response time in a two-choice task. In contrast to typical demonstrations of speed-accuracy trade-off, we found higher choice accuracy in trials with faster response time, above and beyond choice difficulty.

This relationship can be explained by a model of metacognitive decision monitoring where the cost of cognitive control is traded against confidence benefits. Thus, rhesus monkeys also seem to rely upon supervisory monitoring to modulate the amount of control exerted over their decision efficacy. This might drive future research on the evolution of cognitive and neurophysiological processes underlying decision making.

JD and SB were supported by ICM and INSERM. SB was also supported by a grant from ANR (RELATIVE). AL and JB both received a doctoral fellowship from Université Paris Sorbonne.

Team Motivation Brain & Behavior, Paris Brain Institute (ICM), CNRS UMR 7225 - INSERM U1127, Paris, France Arnaud Lespart, Juliette Bénon, Jean Daunizeau & Sebastien Bouret The authors declare no competing interests. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.

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