Maintained goal-directed control with overtraining on ratio schedules

It is thought that goal-directed control of actions weakens or becomes masked by habits over time. We tested the opposing hypothesis that goal-directed control becomes stronger over time, and that this growth is modulated by the overall action-outcome contiguity. Despite group differences in action-outcome contiguity early in training, rats trained under random and fixed ratio schedules showed equivalent goal-directed control of lever pressing that appeared to grow over time. We confirmed that goal-directed control was maintained after extended training under another type of ratio schedule-continuous reinforcement-using specific satiety and taste aversion devaluation methods. These results add to the growing literature showing that extensive training does not reliably weaken goal-directed control and that it may strengthen it, or at least maintain it.