Information-Seeking Behavior in Mice (Mus musculus) During Visual Discriminations: Evaluating Metacognitive and Alternative Accounts in a Target-Cueing Paradigm

Information-seeking behavior is often interpreted as evidence of metacognitive monitoring, but nonmetacognitive factors may also explain such behavior. We examined this issue in miceusing a target-cueing procedure in which an information-seeking response produced a hint indicating the location of the rewarded stimulus. In Experiment 1, mice performed an orientation discrimination. In Experiment 2, the same mice performed a grating discrimination in which grating coarseness varied across trials. During training, some aspects of performancewere compatible with a metacognitive account. In Experiment 1, information seeking did not increase reliably as the discrimination became more difficult, although hint use improvedaccuracy most clearly at smaller orientation differences. In Experiment 2, mice sought information more often at lower grating coarseness, and hint use was associated with the greatestaccuracy benefit under those more difficult conditions. However, the critical test results did not support the prediction that information seeking would track the need for additional information.Mice frequently sought information in target-only trials, in which no additional information was required, and showed relatively low rates of information seeking in trials in which theinitial display consisted of two identical, and therefore nondiagnostic, stimuli. These findings indicate that information seeking in the present task was multiply determined. The observedpattern was consistent with contributions from competition, reinforcement history, and the behavioral utility of the hint. Although some aspects of training remained compatible withconfidence-based control, the critical test conditions showed that information seeking was not governed by confidence monitoring alone.