ReviewNeuroscience and biobehavioral reviews2020
Mapping sign-tracking and goal-tracking onto human behaviors.
Review in Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05456516 (Neurocognitive and Behavioral Factors That Promote Resiliency to Pediatric Obesity), which is not on this map. Cited by 57 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neurocognitive and Behavioral Factors That Promote Resiliency to Pediatric Obesity
Who cites it
57 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Etiologic, Theory-Based, Ontogenetic Hierarchical Framework of Alcohol Use Disorder: A Translational Systematic Review of Reviews.Psychological bulletin · 2021Pooled it
- Reproducible human reward imaging phenotypes exhibit differential sensitivity to dopamine D2 receptor antagonism.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Prediction and Prioritisation: How Reward Learning Shapes Attentional Capture.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Review
- The role of affective learning biases in daily food behaviour.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Toward a Modern View of Pavlovian Conditioning in Applied Behavior Analysis.Perspectives on behavior science · 2026Article
- Article
- Article
- Alcohol approach-avoidance task behavior and brain potentials differentially predict ecologically assessed alcohol craving and consumption in early emerging adulthood.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Article
- Functional bipartition of medial prefrontal cortex into salience detection and movement gain.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The effects of reward uncertainty and alcohol intoxication on human sign- and goal-tracking.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Reduced Pavlovian Value Updating Alters Decision-Making in Sign-Trackers.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Test-retest reliability of the gaze index for sign-tracking and goal-tracking.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Taste matters: lessons learned in translating a conditioned drug cue reactivity paradigm from rodents to humans.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Motivation, attention, and uncertainty: insights from animal and human research and implications for addiction.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- When cues take the wheel: cue-control across alcohol use disorder, binge-eating disorder, gambling disorder, and internet gaming disorder.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Article
- Extinction of outcome-specific Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT), instrumental outcome devaluation, and reward-related attentional capture are predicted by affect-driven impulsivity.Learning & behavior · 2025Article
- Value-modulated attentional capture depends on awareness.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Sign- vs. goal-tracking is associated with greater adiposity and altered functional connectivity in response to a naturalistic food paradigm.Physiology & behavior · 2025Article
- Training Schedule Affects Operant Responding Independent of Motivation in the Neuroligin-3 R451C Mouse Model of Autism.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
As evidenced through classic Pavlovian learning mechanisms, environmental cues can become incentivized and influence behavior. These stimulus-outcome associations are relevant in everyday life but may be particularly important for the development of impulse control disorders including addiction. Rodent studies have elucidated specific learning profiles termed 'sign-tracking' and 'goal-tracking' which map onto individual differences in impulsivity and other behaviors associated with impulse control disorders' etiology, course, and relapse. Whereas goal-trackers are biased toward the outcome, sign-trackers fixate on features that are associated with but not necessary for achieving an outcome; a pattern of behavior that often leads to escalation of reward-seeking that can be maladaptive. The vast majority of the sign- and goal-tracking research has been conducted using rodent models and very few have bridged this concept into the domain of human behavior. In this review, we discuss the attributes of sign- and goal-tracking profiles, how these are manifested neurobiologically, and how these distinct learning styles could be an important tool for clinical interventions in human addiction.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.