de Wit - Control of Behaviour by Competing Learning Systems Flashcards
What is highlighted as a potential factor in the “intention-behaviour gap” by Wit?
Habit learning = habits becoming a better predictor of behaviour than behavioural intentions
How are goal-directed actions defined? (deviating from the definition used in behavioural neuroscience)?
Wit
Instrumental behaviours that are performed when an individual has a specific goal and believes that the behaviour will increase the likelihood of reaching that goal
How are, simply, instrumental behaviours learned?
Wit
As a consequence of a causal relationship between the action/response and its outcome (R > O)
What is the belief and desire criteria of goal-directed action?
Wit article, Heyes and Dickinson criteria
- Goal directed actions are mediated by knowledge of the causal action-outcome relationship (belief criterion)
- Only executed when the outcome is desirable (outcome needs to constitute a goal = desire criterion)
What does the law of effect (Thorndike) entail and for what does it account?
Incremental development of habits:
- Instrumental response, followed by experience of reward (either positive or negative reinforcement) = strengthening of mental association between contextual stimuli and response
- Allows context to directly activate response through S-R association
Difference between habits and goal-directed actions?
Goal-directed:
- Performance mediated by knowledge of R>O relationship & anticipated outcome (dependent on current desire)
Habits:
- Mediated by S-R links
- Behaviourally autonomous (independent of current desire)
What is meant with habits having adaptive value?
They can be executed quickly and efficiently = freeing up cognitive resources (to attent to other important matters)
What leads to a shift from goal-directed behaviour towards habit?
Frequent repitition
What is an important factor within habits & how does this tie in with the habit discontinuity hypothesis?
They are contextually dependent (thus, a change of context can disrupt old S-R habits)
- The latter being what said hypothesis suggests
What is the outcome-revaluation test? What did the test look like?
Skinner’s box was used
To distinguish between habits vs. goal-directed behaviour:
- Learn rats that lever press = food
- To test goal-directed or not: conditioned one food pellet to nausea (outside of Skinner box)
- Returned to Skinner box > if outcome had been devalued (above), less lever presses
- Indication of goal-directedness
What diminishes the results of the outcome-revaluation test
Wit
Extensive overtraining (i.e., behavioural repitition > habit)
What does the consequence of behavioural repitition support?
The law of effect
What is the outcome-devaluation effect?
Reduction in responding selectively for an outcome after satiation
Shown in humans
What is instructed devaluation?
A paradigm used to investigate goal-directed behaviour
- Simply just a (verbal) instruction of an outcome no longer being valuable
e.g., the “Fabulous fruit game”
What are the concerns about symbolic outcomes (instructed devaluation) possibly not being effective in studying basic learning mechanisms?
Trick questions, there aren’t as this approach has been shown to engage in the same neural substrates as the natural reinforcers
What is the “slips-of-action test”?
Variation of instructed devaluation task:
- S-R associations (habits) compete with R>O relationships (goal-directed)
- This occurs in real life, where contextual stimuli can trigger habitual responses that are not in line with current intentions
What regions are implicated in goal-directed control?
Animal lesions
- Prelimbic cortex (R>O Learning process)
- Dorsomedial Striatum (R>O longterm storage)
What happens when the dorsolateral striatum is damaged?
In animals: note lateral, not medial
Remain sensitive to devaluation even after extensive training
- Habitual responding can become goal-directed when dorsolateral striatum is temporarily deactivated
Regions implicated, in human fMRI studies, in goal-directed/habits?
- goal-directed = ventromedial prefrontal cortex/medial orbitofrontal (overlap) + caudate
- Habits = premotor cortex + posterior putamen
this is exam material
Individual differences of corticostriatal pathways means what?
Individual bias towards being more habitual or goal-directed
What is the dual-system theory?
Wit
- (at least) Two learning processes/systems: goal-directed & habitual
- Basically this whole paper
- Neuroscience provide evidence in favour
Why and what implications does the dual-system theory have for psychopathology?
Addiction:
- Formation of strong S-R associations (habit formation, thus voluntary > compulsive drug-seeking)
- Animal studies and fMRI support the above shift & weaker goal-directed control (less activity ventromedial prefrontal cortex)
OCD:
- Impaired goal-directed behaviour & habit tendency
Other:
- Obesity/eating disorders & suggested involvement of habitual compulsive behaviours
- Related to treatment response in SAD & schizophrenia
Thus, habit as a transdiagnostic compulsive trait
