title: Extinction of cue-evoked drug-seeking relies on degrading hierarchical instrumental expectancies.
abstract: There has long been need for a behavioural intervention that attenuates cue-evoked drug-seeking, but the optimal method remains obscure. To address this, we report three approaches to extinguish cue-evoked drug-seeking measured in a Pavlovian to instrumental transfer design, in non-treatment seeking adult smokers and alcohol drinkers. The results showed that the ability of a drug stimulus to transfer control over a separately trained drug-seeking response was not affected by the stimulus undergoing Pavlovian extinction training in experiment 1, but was abolished by the stimulus undergoing discriminative extinction training in experiment 2, and was abolished by explicit verbal instructions stating that the stimulus did not signal a more effective response-drug contingency in experiment 3. These data suggest that cue-evoked drug-seeking is mediated by a propositional hierarchical instrumental expectancy that the drug-seeking response is more likely to be rewarded in that stimulus. Methods which degraded this hierarchical expectancy were effective in the laboratory, and so may have therapeutic potential.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Washington Singer Building, Perry Road, Exeter EX4 4QG, UK; School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia. Electronic address: l.hogarth@exeter.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Lee
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hogarth
authors.affiliation: Department of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Retzler
authors.affiliation: MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit and School of Experimental Psychology, 12a Priory Road, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TU, UK; UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, UK.
authors.forename: Marcus R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Munafò
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
authors.forename: Dominic M D
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Saint Anselm College, Manchester, NH 03102, USA.
authors.forename: Joseph R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Troisi
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZA, UK.
authors.forename: Abigail K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Rose
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZA, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZA, UK; UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, UK.
authors.forename: Matt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Field
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D058999:Drug-Seeking Behavior; D005108:Extinction, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012201:Reward; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology; D014163:Transfer, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Dependence; Extinction; Learning; Relapse; Transfer