A Critical Assessment Of The Goal Replacement Hypothesis For Habitual Behaviour

In this opinion letter we critical assess a new explanatory hypothesis for habitual behaviour in humans, the goal replacement hypothesis. This hypothesis claims that habits are other forms of goal-directed behaviour, what challenges one core assumption of reward learning models. However, we show in this letter that this hypothesis can only explain part of the literature; recent results using new methods for measuring habits cannot be accounted by the goal replacement hypothesis.