Abstract
In neuroscience and psychology, an influential perspective distinguishes between two kinds of behavioral control: instrumental (habitual and goal-directed) and Pavlovian. Understanding the instrumental-Pavlovian interaction is fundamental for the comprehension of decision-making. Animal studies (as those using the negative auto-maintenance paradigm), have demonstrated that Pavlovian mechanisms can have maladaptive effects on instrumental performance. However, evidence for a similar effect in humans is scarce. In addition, the mechanisms modulating the impact of Pavlovian responses on instrumental performance are largely unknown, both in human and non-human animals. The present paper describes a behavioral experiment investigating the effects of Pavlovian conditioned responses on performance in humans, focusing on the aversive domain. Results showed that Pavlovian responses influenced human performance, and, similar to animal studies, could have maladaptive effects. In particular, Pavlovian responses either impaired or increased performance depending on modulator variables such as threat distance, task controllability, punishment history, amount of training, and explicit punishment expectancy. Overall, these findings help elucidating the computational mechanisms underlying the instrumental-Pavlovian interaction, which might be at the base of apparently irrational phenomena in economics, social behavior, and psychopathology.
Highlights
In psychology and neuroscience, an influential perspective views human and animal behavior as the result of the interaction among instrumental and Pavlovian systems (Mackintosh, 1983; Balleine and Dickinson, 1998; Daw et al, 2005; Dayan and Seymour, 2008; Balleine and O’Doherty, 2009)
The most plausible explanation of this finding is that Pavlovian stimuli biased the items’ value. From this and similar studies, it emerges that Pavlovian mechanisms influence goal values, while it remains unclear whether they can influence the correct execution of an adaptive instrumental action
We investigated the Pavlovian-instrumental interaction, underexplored in humans
Summary
An influential perspective (the multicontroller framework) views human and animal behavior as the result of the interaction among instrumental (goal-directed and habitual) and Pavlovian systems (Mackintosh, 1983; Balleine and Dickinson, 1998; Daw et al, 2005; Dayan and Seymour, 2008; Balleine and O’Doherty, 2009). The most plausible explanation of this finding is that Pavlovian stimuli biased the items’ value From this and similar studies, it emerges that Pavlovian mechanisms influence goal values, while it remains unclear whether they can influence the correct execution of an adaptive instrumental action. As a consequence of the food-light association learning, these animals exhibited a conditioned response of pecking the light when it appeared. This response did not have any instrumental consequences in this phase. Pigeons continued to exhibit the pecking response, they gained less reward This result was interpreted as the activation of the innate Pavlovian response of approaching food-related stimuli, at the expense of a more efficient instrumental action. Pavlovian responses are adaptive when they are compatible with www.frontiersin.org
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