What do monkeys, infants, and autistic children have in common? The lack of proper communication means with us. A research team at Columbia University, New York, USA, has set up a test involving a touch-screen video game, designed to assess the cognitive faculties of rhesus macaques. They found that non-human primates are able to reflect on their thoughts and to assess their own performance. But – more importantly – the success of the test indicates that it can be used to study further the cognitive abilities of human subjects whose communication skills are either under-developed or pathologically impaired, namely babies and autism sufferers.

Source: Science Blog