As the proverbial creatures of habit, people tend to repeat the same behaviors in recurring contexts. This review characterizes habits in terms of their cognitive, motivational, and neurobiological properties. In so doing, we identify three ways that habits interface with deliberate goal pursuit: First, habits form as people pursue goals by repeating the same responses in a given context. Second, as outlined in computational models, habits and deliberate goal pursuit guide actions synergistically, although habits are the efficient, default mode of response. Third, people tend to infer from the frequency of habit performance that the behavior must have been intended. We conclude by applying insights from habit research to understand stress and addiction as well as the design of effective interventions to change health and consumer behaviors.

Psychology of Habit.

According to learning-based models of behavior, food cue reactivity and craving are conditioned responses that lead to increased eating and subsequent weight gain. However, evidence supporting this relationship has been mixed. We conducted a quantitative meta-analysis to assess the predictive effects of food cue reactivity and craving on eating and weight-related outcomes. Across 69 reported statistics from 45 published reports representing 3,292 participants, we found an overall medium effect of food cue reactivity and craving on outcomes (r = 0.33, p < 0.001; approximately 11% of variance), suggesting that cue exposure and the experience of craving significantly influence and contribute to eating behavior and weight gain. Follow-up tests revealed a medium effect size for the effect of both tonic and cue-induced craving on eating behavior (r = 0.33). We did not find significant differences in effect sizes based on body mass index, age, or dietary restraint. However, we did find that visual food cues (e.g. pictures and videos) were associated with a similar effect size to real food exposure and a stronger effect size than olfactory cues. Overall, the present findings suggest that food cue reactivity, cue-induced craving and tonic craving systematically and prospectively predict food-related outcomes. These results have theoretical, methodological, public health and clinical implications.

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Food cue reactivity and craving predict eating and weight gain: a meta-analytic review.

High rates of relapse to drug use during abstinence is a defining feature of drug addiction. In abstinent drug users, drug relapse is often precipitated by acute exposure to the self-administered drug, drug-associated cues, stress, as well as by short-term and protracted withdrawal symptoms. In this review, we discuss different animal models that have been used to study behavioral and neuropharmacological mechanisms of these relapse-related phenomena. In the first part, we discuss relapse models in which abstinence is achieved through extinction training, including the established reinstatement model, as well as the reacquisition and resurgence models. In the second part, we discuss recent animal models in which drug relapse is assessed after either forced abstinence (e.g., the incubation of drug craving model) or voluntary (self-imposed) abstinence achieved either by introducing adverse consequences to ongoing drug self-administration (e.g., punishment) or by an alternative nondrug reward using a discrete choice (drug vs. palatable food) procedure. We conclude by briefly discussing the potential implications of the recent developments of animal models of drug relapse after voluntary abstinence to the development of medications for relapse prevention.

Animal models of drug relapse and craving: From drug priming-induced reinstatement to incubation of craving after voluntary abstinence.

Four experiments were performed to explore the role of context in operant extinction. In all experiments, leverpressing in rats was first reinforced with food pellets on a variable interval 30-s schedule, then extinguished, and finally tested in the same and a different physical context. The experiments demonstrated a clear ABA renewal effect, a recovery of extinguished responding when conditioning, extinction, and testing occurred in contexts A, B, and A, respectively. They also demonstrated ABC renewal (where conditioning extinction and testing occurred in contexts A, B, and C) and, for the first time in operant conditioning, AAB renewal (where conditioning, extinction, and testing occurred in contexts A, A, and B). The latter two phenomena indicate that tests outside the extinction context are sufficient to cause a recovery of extinguished operant behavior and, thus, that operant extinction, like Pavlovian extinction, is relatively specific to the context in which it is learned. AAB renewal was not weakened by tripling the amount of extinction training. ABA renewal was stronger than AAB, but not merely because of context A’s direct association with the reinforcer.

/pdf/renewal-after-the-extinction-of-free-operant-behavior-2hea8kv13i.pdf

Renewal after the extinction of free operant behavior

https://www.med.bpums.ac.ir/UploadedFiles/xfiles/File/D-pezeshki/Community-Medicine/JournalClub/93-94/3%20Why%20behavior%20change%20is%20difficult%20to%20sustain.pdf

Why behavior change is difficult to sustain.

Relapse processes after the extinction of instrumental learning: renewal, resurgence, and reacquisition.

Four experiments examined "resurgence" of an instrumental behavior after extinction. All experiments involved three phases in which rats were (1) trained to press one lever for food reward, (2) trained to press a second lever while the first leverpress was extinguished, and (3) tested under conditions in which neither leverpress was rewarded. In each experiment, the first leverpress recovered (resurged) in Phase 3, when the second leverpress was extinguished. The results demonstrated that resurgence occurred when the schedules of reinforcement employed in Phases 1 and 2 yielded either an upshift, downshift, or no change in the rate of reward delivery between those phases. They also demonstrated that initial training on the first lever was required to observe a robust increase in pressing at test (resurgence is thus an associative effect). Resurgence was shown to occur over a wide variety of schedules of reinforcement in Phase 2 (including ratio, interval, and leverpress-independent schedules). Finally, the results do not support the view that resurgence occurs because response competition suppresses leverpressing of the first lever during extinction. Overall, they are consistent with the view that resurgence is a renewal effect in which extinction of an instrumental behavior is specific to the context provided by rewarded leverpressing during the extinction phase.

Mechanisms of resurgence of an extinguished instrumental behavior

Four experiments with rat subjects examined the role of context during the extinction of instrumental (free-operant) behavior. In all experiments, leverpressing was first reinforced on a variable-interval 30-s schedule and then extinguished before being tested in the extinction and renewal contexts. The results identified three important variables affecting the renewal effect after instrumental extinction. First, ABA and ABC forms of renewal were strengthened by increasing the amount of acquisition training. This suggests that the strength of the association learned during acquisition, or the final level of performance, influences the degree of renewal after extinction. The effect of the amount of training was modulated by the second factor, the degrees of generalization from the acquisition and extinction contexts to the test context. The third variable was acquisition training in multiple contexts, which was shown to strengthen ABC renewal. Methodological, theoretical, and practical implications are discussed.

/pdf/effects-of-the-amount-of-acquisition-and-contextual-18gsg0j2ny.pdf

Neil E. Winterbauer

Papers

Renewal after the extinction of free operant behavior

Relapse processes after the extinction of instrumental learning: renewal, resurgence, and reacquisition.

Mechanisms of resurgence of an extinguished instrumental behavior

Effects of the amount of acquisition and contextual generalization on the renewal of instrumental behavior after extinction

Some factors modulating the strength of resurgence after extinction of an instrumental behavior