# Rule-Guided Behavior across Species:Steps toward Declarative Cognition

> **NIH NIH R01** · GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $229,320

## Abstract

Metacognition (knowing one's own mental states), and declarative cognition (expressing them) are essential
cognitive functions and focuses of research. The proposed research will extend these research areas. It will give
participants (human adults, children, nonhuman animals) a behavioral-report methodology by which they can
describe their own task approach. It will give researchers a nonverbal way to instruct participants in the correct
task approach. It will explore a new aspect of metacognition—the self-awareness of one's own task strategy. It
will explore the roots of declarative cognition in young children, by providing a behavioral channel for self-
report before the verbal channel fully supports that declaration. It will be transformative in comparative
psychology, providing behavioral self-reports to animals for the first time.
To this end, the proposed research asks whether participants can tune attention based on the instruction
provided by abstract icons. It asks whether they can use those icons to make reports of their own task
approach. It asks whether these icons can acquire quasi-symbolic properties, so that they are understood
receptively (inducing instructional sets) and productively (allowing self-reports of task strategies). It addresses
those questions using matching, categorization, same-different, and other influential tasks from comparative
and developmental psychology. Finally, it asks whether participants can use their abstract icons to state their
task preferences.
Metacognition and declarative cognition are crucial to intellectual adaptation, educational success, and daily
living. Understanding them well is an important scientific and mental-health goal. The proposed research will
provide new ways to study the most basic forms of these capacities. It will provide animal models. These can be
used in neuroscience studies to foster or rehabilitate these capacities. The research will give developmental
researchers tools for exploring the beginnings of declarative cognition during child development. It will open
nonverbal channels of declarative cognition that could serve humans impaired at verbal communication. These
could support human comfort and palliative care. It will open a new metacognitive channel by which
comparative psychologists may understand better animals' self-reflective minds.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10462612
- **Project number:** 5R01HD093690-05
- **Recipient organization:** GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Michael J Beran
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $229,320
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-08-15 → 2024-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10462612

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10462612, Rule-Guided Behavior across Species:Steps toward Declarative Cognition (5R01HD093690-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10462612. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*