# Fresh external search notes — 2026-08-16

Fresh search was performed before drafting EML-RKD-07.

The sources below are used as realization precedents. They do not establish ontological identity across carriers.

## Human nested cognition
Samuel Recht, Ljubica Jovanovic, Pascal Mamassian, Tarryn Balsdon (2022), *Confidence at the limits of human nested cognition*, Neuroscience of Consciousness, niac014.
- Operational human second-, third-, and fourth-order nested judgments in a specific perceptual paradigm.

## Non-human animal metacognition
J. David Smith (2009), *The study of animal metacognition*, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
- Reviews uncertainty-monitoring and metacognitive-like behavior across dolphins, pigeons, rats, monkeys, and apes.
- Explicitly distinguishes functional parallels from unresolved phenomenal equivalence.

Raphaëlle Malassis et al. (2015), *Assessment of metacognitive monitoring and control in baboons (Papio papio)*, Animal Cognition.
- Baboons used a Repeat option more often on difficult trials; some showed targeted reinspection of less visible information.
- Used as a nonverbal monitoring/control realization precedent.

Additional comparative work on rhesus/capuchin monkeys shows cross-species and cross-paradigm variation; hence species identity is not treated as a direct RKD score.

## AI metacognition
Richard Servajean & Philippe Servajean (2026), *Measuring the metacognition of AI*, arXiv:2603.29693.
- Proposes meta-d' / SDT measurement of AI confidence sensitivity and risk-sensitive regulation.
- Used as evidence that target-sensitive higher-order measurement can be operationalized in artificial systems.

## Multi-agent metacognition
Chenyu Wang & Yang Shu (2026), *MetaCogAgent: A Metacognitive Multi-Agent LLM Framework with Self-Aware Task Delegation*, arXiv:2605.17292.
- Uses self-assessment, capability profiles, cross-agent evaluation, delegation, and boundary learning.
- Used as an engineering precedent for distributed meta-level control.

## Distributed cognition
Edwin Hutchins (1995), *Cognition in the Wild*, MIT Press.
- Analyzes ship navigation as cognition distributed over people, artifacts, representations, and organizational processes.
- Used as a precedent for allowing the cognitive unit of analysis to extend beyond a single biological individual.

James Hollan, Edwin Hutchins, David Kirsh (2000), *Distributed Cognition: Toward a New Foundation for Human-Computer Interaction Research*, ACM TOCHI.
- Further develops distributed cognition as a framework for HCI/cognitive systems.

## Search conclusion
The literature supports multiple distinct realizations of monitoring, uncertainty control, meta-evaluation, delegation, and distributed cognitive processing. It does **not** establish that all such realizations share the same internal mechanism, phenomenology, or ontological status. This is why EML-RKD-07 uses a common typed framework with non-collapse rules rather than a universal identity claim.