Contingency knowledge is necessary for learned motivated behaviour in humans: relevance for addictive behaviour

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Behavioral Neuroscience
• Addiction Research

Background:

• Conditioned behaviors in humans often rely on explicit knowledge of stimulus-response-reinforcer contingencies.
• It is unclear if key drug addiction behaviors—selective attention, instrumental drug-seeking, and emotional state—depend on this explicit contingency knowledge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether selective attention, instrumental avoidance behavior, and emotional state conditioning are dependent on explicit contingency knowledge.
• To utilize an avoidance procedure to rapidly generate conditioned behaviors without the methodological issues of drug conditioning.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments involved training 16 students where a stimulus (S+) predicted a startling noise, escapable via an instrumental avoidance response.
• Measurements included attention allocation to S+, avoidance response rate/probability, and subjective emotional ratings.
• Participants were tested on their knowledge of the stimulus-noise contingency.

Main Results:

• The stimulus (S+) successfully controlled selective attention, instrumental avoidance behavior, and subjective anxiety.
• This control was observed only in participants who explicitly knew the contingency between the S+ and the startling noise.

Conclusions:

• The findings suggest that cognitive knowledge of predictive contingencies mediates the control of selective attention, instrumental drug-seeking behavior, and emotional states by drug-associated stimuli.
• This highlights the role of explicit awareness in addiction-related behaviors.