Heck Michelle, Durieux Nancy, Anselme Patrick, Quertemont Etienne
Quantitative Psychology, Neuroscience of Cognition - PsyNCog, Université de Liège, Place Des Orateurs 2, B4000, Liege, Belgium.
Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique - FNRS, Brussels, Belgium.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2025 Apr;25(2):263-290. doi: 10.3758/s13415-024-01230-8. Epub 2024 Nov 5.
Animal research has identified two major phenotypes in the tendency to attribute incentive salience to a reward-associated cue. Individuals called "sign-trackers" (STs) preferentially approach the cue, assigning both predictive and incentive values to it. In contrast, individuals called "goal-trackers" (GTs) preferentially approach the location of the upcoming reward, assigning only a predictive value to the cue. The ST/GT model has been shown to be relevant to understanding addiction vulnerability and other pathological behaviors in animals. Therefore, recent studies tried to implement this animal model in the human population. This scoping review aimed to identify and map evidence of human sign- and goal-tracking. Studies that explicitly measured human sign- and goal-tracking or related phenomena (e.g., attentional bias induced by reward-related cues), using paradigms in line with the animal model, were eligible for this review. We searched for published, unpublished, and gray literature (PhD theses, posters, conference papers) through the following databases: MEDLINE, Scopus, PsycINFO, Embase, OSF, and Google Scholar. The JBI scoping review methodology was adopted. Screening and extraction were carried out by three reviewers, in pairs. A total of 48 studies were identified. These studies used various experimental paradigms and used the term "sign-tracking" inconsistently, sometimes implicitly or not at all. We conclude that the literature on human sign-tracking is very heterogeneous on many levels. Overall, evidence supports the existence of sign- and goal-tracking behaviors in humans, although further validated research is crucially needed.
动物研究已经确定了在将激励显著性归因于奖励相关线索的倾向方面的两种主要表型。被称为“信号追踪者”（STs）的个体优先接近线索，赋予其预测价值和激励价值。相比之下，被称为“目标追踪者”（GTs）的个体优先接近即将到来的奖励的位置，仅赋予线索预测价值。ST/GT模型已被证明与理解动物的成瘾易感性和其他病理行为相关。因此，最近的研究试图在人类群体中应用这种动物模型。本综述旨在识别和梳理人类信号追踪和目标追踪的证据。使用与动物模型一致的范式明确测量人类信号追踪和目标追踪或相关现象（例如，由奖励相关线索引起的注意力偏差）的研究符合本综述的要求。我们通过以下数据库搜索已发表、未发表和灰色文献（博士论文、海报、会议论文）：MEDLINE、Scopus、PsycINFO、Embase、OSF和谷歌学术。采用了JBI综述方法。筛选和提取由三位评审员成对进行。共识别出48项研究。这些研究使用了各种实验范式，并且对“信号追踪”一词的使用不一致，有时是隐含使用，有时根本未使用。我们得出结论，关于人类信号追踪的文献在许多层面上非常不一致。总体而言，有证据支持人类中存在信号追踪和目标追踪行为，尽管迫切需要进一步的验证研究。
