Abstract
The transition from goal-directed to habitual forms of instrumental behavior is determined by variables such as the amount of training, schedules of reinforcement, the availability of choices, and exposure to drugs of abuse. Less is known about the control of goal-directed behavior when reinforcement is delayed rather than immediate. In these experiments, we investigated in rats the role of response-outcome contiguity on the control of goal-directed action, assessed through satiety-specific outcome devaluation tests. In Experiment 1 using a within-subjects design we observed goal-directed behavior after 6 days of FR1 training when the outcome was presented immediately following the lever press, but not when it was delayed for 20 s, revealing habit formation with delayed outcomes. Experiment 2 revealed that the habitual control observed with 20-s delays of reinforcement can be prevented if, immediately before each instrumental training session, the rats were exposed to the experimental context in the absence of both the lever and reinforcement. In summary, these experiments suggest that response-outcome contiguity plays an important role in the control of goal-directed actions and habits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Highlights
Learning the relationship between actions and their consequences is of adaptive value because it allows animals to operate in their environment to satisfy their needs
As it can be appreciated in the figure, all rats showed a clear satiety-specific devaluation effect when tested in the Immediate setting, but no devaluation in the Delayed setting
In Experiment 2 we tested the hypothesis that the habit we observed with delayed rewards was due to subjects experiencing at best a weak correlation between response and outcome rates
Summary
Learning the relationship between actions and their consequences is of adaptive value because it allows animals to operate in their environment to satisfy their needs. Instrumental learning was described early on in the studies by Thorndike, in which hungry cats learned to press a lever in order to escape a puzzle box and access food (Thorndike, 1911) It was on the basis of these experiments that Thorndike proposed the law of effect, which states that a positive reinforcer (i.e., food) strengthens the connection between environmental stimuli (i.e., the box) and the responses made immediately before the reinforcer was presented, so that in subsequent encounters, the stimulus elicits the response. Instrumental behaviour is goal-directed when it encodes a representation of the causal relationship between the response and the outcome, and a representation of the current value of the outcome (Dickinson, 1994). It has led to research programs in both species that investigate the neural basis of instrumental behaviour (Dolan & Dayan, 2013), and to the proposal that some psychiatric disorders
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