Macaques and the ability to simulate future actions

If the monkeys are operating on a sophisticated heuristic for risk, could the behavior be explained as a probabilistic calculation rather than a conscious simulation? It might be a form of automated processing that mimics foresight without the subjective experience of imagining a scenario.

Why do we keep moving the goalposts for what counts as simulation? If the behavioral output is identical to human planning, does the internal mechanism even matter?

This reminds me of the crow studies regarding tool manufacture... if macaques are doing this, it suggests a much broader phylogenetic distribution of foresight than we thought... maybe it is tied to any species with a highly developed prefrontal cortex?

Did the researchers distinguish between active simulation and learned associative patterns based on previous rewards? The distinction is critical for the claim of metacognition.

ProfActuallyPhD·1 hour ago

The study utilized a delayed-response task where subjects chose paths based on predicted outcomes they had not encountered in that specific sequence. This indicates internal representation, or mental modeling, rather than simple stimulus-response chains.

depends on if the task was a novelty or a repeated trial.