Environmental control of human goal pursuit: Investigating cue-based forced responses in a Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer paradigm.

Abstract

Effective human action is dependent on goals that are cued in the environment. A major challenge in examining the environmental control of goal-directed behavior concerns a proper test of the mediating role of outcome value in cue-driven behavior. Building on the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) paradigm, in two experiments we tested a novel forced-choice multiple response task that allowed us to test specific PIT effects by analyzing RTs and accuracy. We hypothesized and found that a Pavlovian cue that was predictive of low or high valued outcomes triggered instrumental responses when the cue and response shared the same outcome compared to when the cue and response did not share the same outcome. Importantly, these effects were more pronounced for high (vs. low) value outcomes, suggesting a value-based specific PIT effect. Theoretical implications and future directions for this novel PIT paradigm are briefly discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)