Grundmann Clarissa Carolin, Arndt Viktoria Anna, Ebrahimi Claudia, Musial Milena Philomena Maria, Bode Erik Lukas, Schlagenhauf Florian, Endrass Tanja
Addiction Research, Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Psychology, TUD Dresden University of Technology, 01062, Dresden, Germany.
Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences | CCM, NeuroCure Clinical Research Center, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2025 May 6. doi: 10.3758/s13415-025-01300-5.
Habits are automatic behaviors triggered by specific cues and are thought to optimize daily activities by reducing cognitive effort and enabling efficient and fast performance. Yet, they can also lead to inflexibility, preventing individuals from adapting to environmental changes. Since it has been difficult to examine habit formation in humans with traditional outcome devaluation paradigms, we applied a motor sequence learning task (MSLT) to study this process. Thirty-one participants (16 female, 28.4 ± 5.3 years old) completed the MSLT on two consecutive days. They implicitly learned to execute a 12-item motor sequence using four fingers, each corresponding to one of four distinct visual stimulus locations. Test blocks introduced sequence deviations by intermittently omitting one item of the sequence. We measured whether participants were able to flexibly adapt their behavior or would incorrectly execute the omitted response - a so-called action slip. Action slips serve as an indicator of automatization or behavioral inflexibility. Findings indicate that prolonged training led to faster response times and lower error rates in learning compared to random blocks, suggesting successful sequence learning and the emergence of automatic behaviors. Action slips increased with extensive training, demonstrating the shift towards automatic and inflexible responding, indicative of habit formation. The results highlight the utility of the MSLT in studying habit formation in humans and emphasize the role of extensive training, motor skills, and automaticity. The task offers a promising framework for investigating the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying habitual behavior, providing new insights into the balance between habitual and goal-directed control.
习惯是由特定线索触发的自动行为，被认为通过减少认知努力并实现高效快速的表现来优化日常活动。然而，它们也可能导致僵化，使个体无法适应环境变化。由于使用传统的结果贬值范式来研究人类的习惯形成一直很困难，我们应用了一项运动序列学习任务（MSLT）来研究这一过程。31名参与者（16名女性，年龄28.4±5.3岁）连续两天完成了MSLT。他们隐性地学习使用四根手指执行一个包含12个动作的序列，每根手指对应四个不同视觉刺激位置中的一个。测试块通过间歇性省略序列中的一项来引入序列偏差。我们测量了参与者是否能够灵活地调整他们的行为，或者是否会错误地执行被省略的反应——即所谓的动作失误。动作失误是自动化或行为僵化的一个指标。研究结果表明，与随机块相比，长时间训练导致学习中的反应时间更快，错误率更低，这表明序列学习成功且出现了自动行为。动作失误随着广泛训练而增加，表明向自动和僵化反应的转变，这是习惯形成的标志。结果突出了MSLT在研究人类习惯形成中的效用，并强调了广泛训练、运动技能和自动化的作用。该任务为研究习惯行为背后的神经和认知机制提供了一个有前景的框架，为习惯控制和目标导向控制之间的平衡提供了新的见解。
