title: Mechanisms of habitual approach: Failure to suppress irrelevant responses evoked by previously reward-associated stimuli.
abstract: Reward learning has a powerful influence on the attention system, causing previously reward-associated stimuli to automatically capture attention. Difficulty ignoring stimuli associated with drug reward has been linked to addiction relapse, and the attention system of drug-dependent patients seems especially influenced by reward history. This and other evidence suggests that value-driven attention has consequences for behavior and decision-making, facilitating a bias to approach and consume the previously reward-associated stimulus even when doing so runs counter to current goals and priorities. Yet, a mechanism linking value-driven attention to behavioral responding and a general approach bias is lacking. Here we show that previously reward-associated stimuli escape inhibitory processing in a go/no-go task. Control experiments confirmed that this value-dependent failure of goal-directed inhibition could not be explained by search history or residual motivation, but depended specifically on the learned association between particular stimuli and reward outcome. When a previously high-value stimulus is encountered, the response codes generated by that stimulus are automatically afforded high priority, bypassing goal-directed cognitive processes involved in suppressing task-irrelevant behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University.
authors.forename: Brian A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Villanova University.
authors.forename: Charles L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Folk
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Villanova University.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Garrison
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Villanova University.
authors.forename: Leeland
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rogers
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D012201:Reward; D055815:Young Adult