Measuring wanting without asking: The Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer paradigm under test

Chillà, Chiara; Cereghetti, Donato; Cayeux, Isabelle; Porcherot, Christelle; Delplanque, Sylvain; Sander, David

doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2019.103720

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…PIT has been tested on decision-making, showing that people are more likely to choose actions in response to cues associated with outcomes of actions (e.g., Jeffs & Duka, 2017) or on forced-choice response time tasks (Qin et al, 2021; Watson et al, 2016), showing faster response initiation to cues that represent valuable outcomes. Research also employed handgrip tasks to assess people’s efforts to obtain rewards, but the results are mixed (Chillà et al, 2019; Lehner et al, 2017).…”

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confidence: 99%

From action initiation to persistence: A Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer analysis for cue-based goal pursuit.

Qin¹,

Mariën²,

Custers³

et al. 2023

Motivation Science

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Previous research suggests that cues can motivate goal-directed behavior directly. According to the framework of human unconscious goal pursuit, exposure to goal-relevant cues yields two distinct behavioral effects: action initiation and subsequent action persistence. However, the evidence for such a full motivational control effect in human goal-directed behavior is meager. The present study builds on the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) approach to test the cue-based motivational control. We employed a tapping task that considers the speed of decreasing the distance between an outcome and oneself as an index of motivation of behavior. Thus, we could separate action initiation and persistence in one single test task. Participants first underwent instrumental and Pavlovian training. They learned to press two keys to earn 20 or 5 cents (high-or low-value outcomes) and to associate the two outcomes with two specific cues. Next, they had to press one of the two keys multiple times to bring a Pavlovian cue to the front of their computer screen. Results showed that participants responded faster with the high-value key to the high-versus low-value cue, indicating value-sensitive action initiation effects. However, this effect did not translate into action persistence, as the response time steeply declined over time. These results point to the importance of differentiating between action initiation and persistence of action in cue-based goaldirected behavior as modeled by PIT.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

From action initiation to persistence: A Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer analysis for cue-based goal pursuit.

Qin¹,

Mariën²,

Custers³

et al. 2023

Motivation Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…PIT has been tested on decision-making, showing that people are more likely to choose actions in response to cues associated with outcomes of actions (e.g., Jeffs & Duka, 2017) or on forced-choice response time tasks (Qin et al, 2021;Watson et al, 2016), showing faster response initiation to cues that represent valuable outcomes. Research also employed handgrip tasks to assess the effort that people spend to obtain rewards, but the results are mixed (Chillà et al, 2019;Lehner et al, 2017).…”

Section: Chapter Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting Automatic Goal Pursuit: Exploring the Value of Goals in Cue-Based Behavior

Qin

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Human beings perform actions for desirable outcomes to satisfy needs and experience pleasure. Such behavior can be cued by the environment. The goal-directed account for such cue-based behavior has been well-accepted in more recent studies, especially in the field of automatic goal pursuit. However, the understanding and examination of the direct control of goal-directed behavior by the environment are plagued by the absence of clear methods or tests. More specifically, while studies hint at the involvement of goal representations, they need to properly distinguish between behavior activated directly by the cues and behavior mediated by representations of desired outcomes. That is, the cues used in these studies are usually associated with both the goal and the instrumental actions causing them in daily life. Therefore, it is impossible to distinguish between the direct and indirect effects of cues on behavior. To address this issue, in the present thesis, a Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) paradigm was used to systematically investigate cue-based goal-directed behavior by comparing cued behavior toward high vs. low-value outcomes. This paradigm allows researchers to separate action-outcome learning from stimulus-outcome learning, meaning that the cue is only indirectly associated with actions that lead to the same outcomes. Hence, any facilitating effect from cue can only be attributed to the indirect effect of outcome representations. More importantly, we investigated such effects on goals with social meaningfulness (e.g., pro-social goals) and what stage of behavior (i.e., action initiation and action persistence) can be influenced by such processes. Results indicate that cues predictive of low or high-valued outcomes prompt instrumental responses when the cue and response share the same outcome. Moreover, the effects are more pronounced for high-value outcomes, indicating a value-based specific PIT effect. For the high-level goal pursuit, we found that a cue predictive of pro-self outcomes facilitates instrumental responses, whereas the specific PIT effect for pro-social outcomes only emerges when participants have the freedom to donate the money. Additionally, we examined the influence of multi-functional outcomes on the PIT effect. Results reveal that cues associated with multi-functional snacks facilitate the corresponding actions, whereas cues associated with single-functional snacks do not. Furthermore, we explored the motivational control effect of cues on goal-directed behavior. The findings demonstrate that participants responded faster to the high-value cue. However, this effect was only found in action initiation and did not translate into action persistence over time. Overall, this research sheds light on the environmental cues that influence human behavior, highlighting the mediating role of outcome value and providing insights into high-level goal pursuit cued by the environment, at least in action initiation. We believe that the PIT paradigm is a valuable tool for investigating the motivational underpinnings of cue-driven goal-directed behavior and, thus, how automatic goal pursuit may emerge.

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Implicit Measures of Food “Wanting”

Cereghetti¹,

Cayeux²,

Delplanque³

et al. 2023

Methods and Protocols in Food Science

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Measuring wanting without asking: The Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer paradigm under test

Cited by 4 publications

References 46 publications

From action initiation to persistence: A Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer analysis for cue-based goal pursuit.

From action initiation to persistence: A Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer analysis for cue-based goal pursuit.

Revisiting Automatic Goal Pursuit: Exploring the Value of Goals in Cue-Based Behavior

Implicit Measures of Food “Wanting”

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