ArticleJournal of experimental psychology. Animal learning and cognition2021
Reinforcer predictability and stimulus salience promote discriminated habit learning.
Article in Journal of experimental psychology. Animal learning and cognition, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sequence termination cues drive automated habit-like strategy via dopamine-mediated processes.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Sequence termination cues drive habits via dopamine-mediated credit assignment.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Goal-direction and habit in human and nonhuman behavioral sequences (behavior chains).Journal of experimental psychology. Animal learning and cognition · 2025Article
- Outcome devaluation as a method for identifying goal-directed behaviors in rats.Nature protocols · 2025Review
- Effect of the reinforcement rate on goal-directed and habitual choices in a multiple schedule.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Stimulus conditions that promote habitual control.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Response-specificity or response-generality of inhibition in an operant feature-negative discrimination: Influence of the amount of inhibition training and attention to the response.Learning and motivation · 2024Article
- Habit and persistence.Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior · 2024Review
- Stimulus control of habits: Evidence for both stimulus specificity and devaluation insensitivity in a dual-response task.Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior · 2024Article
- The temporal structure of goal-directed and habitual operant behavior.Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior · 2024Article
- Partial reinforcement extinction and omission effects in the elimination and recovery of discriminated operant behavior.Journal of experimental psychology. Animal learning and cognition · 2023Article
- Learning to stop responding.Behavioural processes · 2023Review
- Lack of action monitoring as a prerequisite for habitual and chunked behavior: Behavioral and neural correlates.iScience · 2023Article
- Intermittent access training produces greater motivation for a non-drug reinforcer than long access training.Learning & behavior · 2022Article
- Partial reinforcement effects on acquisition and extinction of a conditioned taste aversion.Learning & behavior · 2022Article
- On the interrelation between alcohol addiction-like behaviors in rats.Psychopharmacology · 2022Article
- Context, attention, and the switch between habit and goal-direction in behavior.Learning & behavior · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Instrumental (operant) behavior can be goal directed, but after extended practice it can become a habit triggered by environmental stimuli. There is little information, however, about the variables that encourage habit learning, or about the development of discriminated habits that are actually triggered by specific stimuli. (Most studies of habit in animal learning have used free-operant methods.) In the present experiments, rats received training in which a lever press was reinforced only in the presence of a discrete stimulus (S) and the status of the behavior as goal-directed or habitual was determined by reinforcer devaluation tests. Experiment 1 compared lever insertion and an auditory cue (tone) in their ability to support habit learning. Despite prior speculation in the literature, the "salient" lever insertion S was not better than the tone at supporting habit, although the rats learned more rapidly to respond in its presence. Experiment 2 then examined the role of reinforcer predictability with the brief (6-s) tone S. Lever pressing during the tone was reinforced on either every trial or on 50% of trials; habit was observed only with the highly predictable (100%) relationship between S and the reinforcer. Experiment 3 replicated this effect with the tone in a modified procedure and found that lever insertion contrastingly encouraged habit regardless of reinforcer predictability. The results support an interactive role for reinforcer predictability and stimulus salience in discriminated habit learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.