TY - JOUR
T1 - Unexpected food outcomes can return a habit to goal-directed action
AU - Bouton, Mark E.
AU - Broomer, Matthew C.
AU - Rey, Catalina N.
AU - Thrailkill, Eric A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant RO1 DA 033123 to MEB.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2020/3
Y1 - 2020/3
N2 - Three experiments examined the return of a habitual instrumental response to the status of goal-directed action. In all experiments, rats received extensive training in which lever pressing was reinforced with food pellets on a random-interval schedule of reinforcement. In Experiment 1, the extensively-trained response was not affected by conditioning a taste aversion to the reinforcer, and was therefore considered a habit. However, if the response had earned a new and unexpected food pellet during the final training session, the response was affected by taste aversion conditioning to the (first) reinforcer, and had thus been converted to a goal-directed action. In Experiment 3, 30 min of prefeeding with an irrelevant food pellet immediately before the test also converted a habit back to action, as judged by the taste-aversion devaluation method. That result was consistent with difficulty in finding evidence of habit with the sensory-specific satiety method after extensive instrumental training (Experiment 2). The results suggest that an instrumental behavior's status as a habit is not permanent, and that a habit can be returned to action status by associating it with a surprising reinforcer (Experiment 1) or by giving the animal an unexpected prefeeding immediately prior to the action/habit test (Experiment 3).
AB - Three experiments examined the return of a habitual instrumental response to the status of goal-directed action. In all experiments, rats received extensive training in which lever pressing was reinforced with food pellets on a random-interval schedule of reinforcement. In Experiment 1, the extensively-trained response was not affected by conditioning a taste aversion to the reinforcer, and was therefore considered a habit. However, if the response had earned a new and unexpected food pellet during the final training session, the response was affected by taste aversion conditioning to the (first) reinforcer, and had thus been converted to a goal-directed action. In Experiment 3, 30 min of prefeeding with an irrelevant food pellet immediately before the test also converted a habit back to action, as judged by the taste-aversion devaluation method. That result was consistent with difficulty in finding evidence of habit with the sensory-specific satiety method after extensive instrumental training (Experiment 2). The results suggest that an instrumental behavior's status as a habit is not permanent, and that a habit can be returned to action status by associating it with a surprising reinforcer (Experiment 1) or by giving the animal an unexpected prefeeding immediately prior to the action/habit test (Experiment 3).
KW - Goal-directed action
KW - Habit
KW - Reinforcer devaluation
KW - Sensory-specific satiety
KW - Taste aversion learning
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U2 - 10.1016/j.nlm.2020.107163
DO - 10.1016/j.nlm.2020.107163
M3 - Article
C2 - 31927082
AN - SCOPUS:85079051281
SN - 1074-7427
VL - 169
JO - Communications in behavioral biology. Part A: [Original articles]
JF - Communications in behavioral biology. Part A: [Original articles]
M1 - 107163
ER -