Context, attention, and the switch between habit and goal-direction in behavior

Abstract

This article reviews recent findings from the author’s laboratory that may provide new insights into how habits are made and broken. Habits are extensively practiced behaviors that are automatically evoked by antecedent cues and performed without their goal (or reinforcer) “in mind.” Goal-directed actions, in contrast, are instrumental behaviors that are performed because their goal is remembered and valued. New results suggest that actions may transition to habit after extended practice when conditions encourage reduced attention to the behavior. Consistent with theories of attention and learning, a behavior may command less attention (and become habitual) as its reinforcer becomes well-predicted by cues in the environment; habit learning is prevented if presentation of the reinforcer is uncertain. Other results suggest that habits are not permanent, and that goal-direction can be restored by several environmental manipulations, including exposure to unexpected reinforcers or context change. Habits are more context-dependent than goal-directed actions are. Habit learning causes retroactive interference in a way that is reminiscent of extinction: It inhibits, but does not erase, goal-direction in a context-dependent way. The findings have implications for the understanding of habitual and goal-directed control of behavior as well as disordered behaviors like addictions.

Pilot testing of an adaptive, individualized inhibitory control training for binge drinking: first evidence on feasibility, acceptance, and efficacy

“…For example, a recent study by Dormal and colleagues (Dormal et al, 2020 ) suggested that combining the GNG paradigm with transcranial direct-current stimulation may be a promising way to improve IC in BD as it was shown to promote attention-related brain activity. In addition, Bouton ( 2021 ) recently reviewed a number of animal studies which demonstrate that a habit can be returned to a goal-directed action, for example by a context switch or pharmacological interventions. However, there is at present a scarcity of experimental studies in humans to enhance our understanding how habit behavior in addiction can be addressed apart from increasing response inhibition or extinguishing cue-conditioned responses, both of which are of limited effectiveness (Jones et al, 2016 ; Mellentin et al, 2017 ).…”

Procedures between training and reactivation influence the destabilization of instrumental sucrose memory

“…In an instrumental learning setting, reinforced lever pressing not only leads to instrumental action-outcome and stimulusresponse associations, but also pavlovian associations between the reinforcer and discrete or contextual stimuli (Milton and Everitt, 2010). While action-outcome and stimulus-response associations may be mutually inhibitory, thereby allowing only one of the two to control behavior (Bouton, 2021), instrumental and pavlovian associations may be active in parallel. This leads to the question of whether two independent associations can both be destabilized in parallel by the same reactivation session.…”

Schedule-dependent production of stereotyped sequences of actions

“…How automatic sequences of actions are learned and what factors contribute to their development is not well understood. While the study of human behaviors both in health (Keller et al, 2021; Luque et al, 2020; Smith and Graybiel, 2016) and disease (Burguière et al, 2015; Byrne et al, 2021; O’Tousa and Grahame, 2014) provides useful insights into these mechanisms, many investigations of the molecular and circuit underpinnings of automatic behaviors are currently performed in rodents (Bouton, 2021; Burguière et al, 2015; Faure et al, 2005; Gremel and Costa, 2013; Lerner, 2020; Renteria et al, 2018; Wassum et al, 2009) due to the availability of genetic and optogenetic tools. Understanding the features of training paradigms that effectively or ineffectively promote the emergence of reproducible behavioral sequences is therefore necessary to take full advantage of the tools only accessible to rodent research, and to identify the circuits, cell types and molecular mechanisms that control sequences of stereotypical actions.…”