The contextual regulation of goal-directed actions

doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.03.022

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

Volume 41, October 2021, Pages 57-62

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.03.022 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Goal-directed actions are initially context-dependent but become context-independent over time.
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Goal-directed actions are context-dependent when conflicting response-outcome contingencies exist.
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Goal-directed actions are impaired in contexts that are highly motivationally or emotionally salient.
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Evidence suggests that goal-directed actions initially depend on episodic memory, but depend on semantic memory over time.

Goal-directed actions typically transfer readily between contexts, but this is not always the case. Goal-directed actions do not transfer across contexts just after they are initially learned, or when multiple, competing response-outcome contingencies exist, or when the context is highly emotionally salient. Goal-directed actions are, thus, context-dependent under each of these conditions. Here we review the studies that have led to these findings, and discuss the potentially unique psychological mechanisms that could underlie the context-dependency of goal-directed actions in each instance.

Section snippets

The contextual control of goal-directed actions

By their name and nature, actions that are ‘goal-directed’ are controlled by the desire for a particular goal rather than any surrounding stimuli, including context. This implies, therefore, that goal-directed actions should be context-independent. One can intuitively imagine scenarios in which this is the case. For instance, our desire to eat ice cream over other food alternatives might transcend home, work, and other environments. In a sense then, the ‘context’ for this goal-directed action

Psychological mechanisms of context-dependent goal-directed actions

Certain features of the experiments that demonstrate the transient context-dependence of goal-directed actions suggest that the undelying psychological mechanism of this phenomenon could be differential reliance on episodic versus semantic memory systems. As mentioned above, this effect appears to be specific to the physical context because alterations in other types of context, such as temporal context or motivational state, had no effect on goal-directed actions. These results imply that

Conflict of interest statement

Nothing declared.

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

• of special interest
•• of outstanding interest

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (DP200102445) awarded to L.A.B.

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Cited by (11)

A hippocampo-cortical pathway detects changes in the validity of an action as a predictor of reward
2024, Current Biology
Much research has been dedicated to understanding the psychological and neural bases of goal-directed action, yet the relationship between context and goal-directed action is not well understood. Here, we used excitotoxic lesions, chemogenetics, and circuit-specific manipulations to demonstrate the role of the ventral hippocampus (vHPC) in contextual learning that supports sensitivity to action-outcome contingencies, a hallmark of goal-directed action. We found that chemogenetic inhibition of the ventral, but not dorsal, hippocampus attenuated sensitivity to instrumental contingency degradation. We then tested the hypothesis that this deficit was due to an inability to discern the relative validity of the action compared with the context as a predictor of reward. Using latent inhibition and Pavlovian context conditioning, we confirm that degradation of action-outcome contingencies relies on intact context-outcome learning and show that this learning is dependent on vHPC. Finally, we show that chemogenetic inhibition of vHPC terminals in the medial prefrontal cortex also impairs both instrumental contingency degradation and context-outcome learning. These results implicate a hippocampo-cortical pathway in adapting to changes in instrumental contingencies and indicate that the psychological basis of this deficit is an inability to learn the predictive value of the context. Our findings contribute to a broader understanding of the neural bases of goal-directed action and its contextual regulation.
Making habits measurable beyond what they are not: A focus on associative dual-process models
2022, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Citation Excerpt :
Different outcome devaluation methods (e.g., satiation versus conditioned taste aversion) can influence whether habits are detected or not (Trask et al., 2020), with conditioned taste aversion generally being used for habit research. The altered motivational state of satiety or feeding of outcomes prior to testing may promote the shift from habits back to goal-directed control in and of itself, possibly comprising a kind of context shift (Abiero and Bradfield, 2021; Parkes et al., 2016). Even within a specific devaluation method, different protocols can exert a large effect on the behaviour observed at test (Amaya et al., 2020).
Habits are the subject of intense international research. Under the associative dual-process model the outcome devaluation paradigm has been used extensively to classify behaviours as being either goal-directed (sensitive to shifts in the value of associated outcomes) or habitual (triggered by stimuli without anticipation of consequences). This has proven to be a useful framework for studying the neurobiology of habit and relevance of habits in clinical psychopathology. However, in recent years issues have been raised about this rather narrow definition of habits in comparison to habitual behaviour experienced in the real world. Specifically, defining habits as the absence of goal-directed control, the very specific set-ups required to demonstrate habit experimentally and the lack of direct evidence for habits as stimulus-response behaviours are viewed as problematic. In this review paper we address key critiques that have been raised about habit research within the framework of the associative dual-process model. We then highlight novel research approaches studying different features of habits with methods that expand beyond traditional paradigms.
Outcome-selective reinstatement is predominantly context-independent, and associated with c-Fos activation in the posterior dorsomedial striatum
2022, Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Citation Excerpt :
That is, across both experiments, we observed selective reinstatement to be intact for group ABB despite the response and outcome never having been experienced in Context B prior to test. This was in contrast to our prior speculations made both here and elsewhere (Abiero & Bradfield, 2021), that selective reinstatement would be specific to the context in which outcome-response associations are initially learned, based on the fact that stimulus–response habits are generally context-specific (Bouton et al., 2011; Thrailkill & Bouton, 2015). This speculation relied upon the claim that outcome-response associations represent a special type of stimulus–response association, in which the outcome functions as a stimulus (Ostlund & Balleine, 2007).
Research from human and animal studies has found that after responding has been successfully reduced following treatment it can return upon exposure to certain contexts. An individual in recovery from alcohol use disorder, for example, might relapse to drinking upon visiting their favourite bar. However, most of these data have been derived from experiments involving a single (active) response, and the context-dependence of returned responding in situations involving choice between multiple actions and outcomes is less well-understood. We thus investigated how outcome-selective reinstatement – a procedure involving choice between two actions and outcomes – was affected by altering the physical context in rats. In Experiment 1, rats were trained over 6 days to press a left lever for one food outcome (pellets or sucrose) and a right lever for the other outcome. Then, rats received an extinction session in either the same context (A) as lever press training, or in a different context (B). Rats were tested immediately (5 min) after extinction in Context A or B such that there were four groups in total: AAA, ABB, ABA, and AAB. Reinstatement testing consisted of one food outcome being delivered ‘freely’ (i.e. unearned by lever pressing and unsignalled by cues) to the food magazine every 4 min in the following order: Sucrose, Pellet, Pellet, Sucrose. Selective reinstatement was considered intact if pellet delivery increased pressing selectively on the pellet lever, and sucrose delivery selectively increased pressing on the sucrose lever. This result (Reinstated > Nonreinstated) was observed for rats in group AAA and ABB, but not rats in groups ABA and AAB. Experiment 2 was conducted identically, except that rats received two extinction sessions over two days and tested one day later. This time, all groups demonstrated intact outcome-selective reinstatement regardless of context. Analysis of c-Fos expression in several brain regions revealed that only c-Fos expression in the posterior dorsomedial striatum (pDMS) was related to intact reinstatement performance. Overall, these results suggest that outcome-selective reinstatement is predominantly context-independent, and that intact reinstatement is related to neuronal activity in the pDMS.
Editorial overview: Value-based decision making: control, value, and context in action
2021, Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences
The temporal structure of goal-directed and habitual operant behavior
2024, Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
Contribution of dorsal versus ventral hippocampus to the hierarchical modulation of goal-directed actions in rats
2023, European Journal of Neuroscience

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^☆: Given her role as Guest Editor, Laura Bradfield had no involvement in the peer-review of this article and has no access to information regarding its peer-review. Full responsibility for the editorial process for this article was delegated to Bernard Bellaine.

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The contextual regulation of goal-directed actions☆

Highlights

Section snippets

The contextual control of goal-directed actions

Psychological mechanisms of context-dependent goal-directed actions

Conflict of interest statement

References and recommended reading

Acknowledgements

Behav Processes

Learn Behav

Context, time, and memory retrieval in the interference paradigms of Pavlovian learning

Psychol Bull

Behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms of Pavlovian and instrumental extinction learning

Physiol Rev

Habit, choice, and addiction

Neuropsychopharmacology

Contextual control of instrumental actions and habits

J Exp Psychol Anim Learn Cogn

Goal-directed instrumental action: contingency and incentive learning and their cortical substrates

Neuropharmacology

Goal-directed actions transiently depend on dorsal hippocampus

Nat Neurosci

A time course analysis of satiety-induced instrumental outcome devaluation

Learn Behav

Contextual control of biconditional task performance: evidence for cue and response competition in rats

Q J Exp Psychol