Hunger as a Context: Food Seeking That Is Inhibited During Hunger Can Renew in the Context of Satiety

Abstract

Even when a diet has been successful, people often return to overeating when the diet ends. One potential reason is that behavioral inhibition learned while dieting might not transfer readily outside the context in which it is learned: Basic research indicates that after a behavior is inhibited, a return to the conditioning context or simple removal from the treatment context can cause it to relapse or return (“renewal”). Can hunger and satiety states play the role of context? In two experiments, rats learned a food-seeking response for sucrose or sweet-fatty food pellets while satiated. Responding was then inhibited (extinguished) while they were hungry. On return to the satiated state, food-seeking was renewed. Additional results suggest that associations with hunger/satiety stimuli were learned more readily than those with other potentially useful exteroceptive stimuli. The findings have implications for understanding the role of interoceptive contexts in controlling the inhibition of motivated behavior.

Extinction of instrumental (operant) learning: interference, varieties of context, and mechanisms of contextual control

“…When responding was then tested separately in both the satiated and hungry states, renewed responding was observed in the satiated state, suggesting an ABA renewal effect in which satiety played the role of Context A. Schepers and Bouton (2017) noted that renewed responding in the satiety context went against traditional notions about how behavior is motivated by hunger and satiety; it may also partly explain why dieters who learn to inhibit their eating while starving themselves on a diet might overeat again when they are satiated. Interestingly, an AAB effect (conditioning-extinction-testing while hungry-hungry-satiated) was not observed, perhaps because it was less able to override hunger’s possible prior association with feeding acquired in the rat’s previous experience.…”

“…Schepers and Bouton (2017) recently reported that interoceptive states produced by hunger and satiety can control instrumental extinction. In one experiment, rats were trained to lever press for sucrose or sweet-fatty pellets while they were on ad lib food, and thus in a state of satiety.…”

Further evaluation of a nonsequential approach to studying operant renewal

“…Laboratory analyses of renewal typically consist of three phases (baseline, treatment, and a renewal test). In the case of research using rat subjects, for example, a target behavior like lever pressing may be reinforced in the presence of one context (Context A) defined by unique exteroceptive (e.g., auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, and/or social; e.g., Bouton et al, ; Browning & Shahan, ) and/or interoceptive (e.g., drug states, hunger level; Bouton, Kenney, & Rosengard, ; Schepers & Bouton, ) stimuli. Next, during treatment, lever pressing may be placed on extinction in the presence of a second, distinct set of contextual variables (Context B).…”

Is Positive Reinforcement Pseudoscience?

“…Autoshaping clearly demonstrated that reinforcement was not necessary to explain the development of the canonical lever press response. Today, however, now nearly 80 years since Skinner's first Operant conditioning publications, positive reinforcement continues to be used to describe how a rat learns to press a lever [4][5][6][7][8][9]. If the stimulus was a reinforcer, it will increase the previous behavior.…”