Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader contestants have it easy. They hear a question, then choose whether or not to answer it. If they try, they risk losing their winnings up to a certain point. If they decide the question is too tough, they can decline and take home their winnings – generally about half of the current question's value.
Contestants use an ability known as metacognition when making their decision; the ability to “think about thinking,” which amounts to predicting how successful you'll be based on your knowledge of your knowledge.
If you think this is a primate-specific evolutionary advantage, well... sorry . Rats do it, too.
So says a team from the University of Georgia in Athens. Trained to discriminate between short and long sounds, or decline, rats received six, zero, or three food pellets, respectively. When the sound length was too difficult to decide, rats knew they didn't know it, and took three pellets instead of six.
Metacognition in the Rat [Current Biology]
