Habit formation viewed as structural change in the behavioral network

Abstract

Habit formation is a process in which an action becomes involuntary. While goal-directed behavior is driven by its consequences, habits are elicited by a situation rather than its consequences. Existing theories have proposed that actions are controlled by these two distinct systems. Although canonical theories based on such distinctions are starting to be challenged, there is no theoretical framework that implements goal-directed behavior and habits within a single system. Here, we propose a novel theoretical framework by hypothesizing that behavior is a network composed of several responses. With this framework, we have shown that the transition of goal-directed actions to habits is caused by a change in a single network structure. Furthermore, we confirmed that the proposed network model behaves in a manner consistent with the existing experimental results reported in animal behavioral studies. Our results revealed that habit could be formed under the control of a single system rather than two distinct systems. By capturing habit formation as a single network change, this framework can help study habit formation for experimental and theoretical research.

Homeostatic Control on the Thought: a Comprehensive Explanation of Mind Wandering

“…The facts lead us to assume that there can be a different principle from maximizing a single reward, as expected in a laboratory setting. Evidence for this has long been reported in animal behavior research, such as engaging in diverse behaviors not related to the experimental task (Breland and Breland, 1961; Falk, 1966; Gentry, 1968; Levitsky and Collier, 1968; Skinner, 1948), and changes in the relative reward effects of behavioral opportunities, such as a less preferred behavior reinforce a more preferred behavior under specific environmental settings (Allison and Timberlake, 1974), have been reported, and it has been theoretically suggested that task-unrelated behaviors influence the behavior of task-related behaviors Theories suggest that they may influence task-related behavioral behavior (Baum, 2012; Guthrie, 1930; Herrnstein, 1970; Killeen and Fetterman, 1988; Staddon, 1979; Timberlake and Allison, 1974; Yamada and Toda, 2023). In addition, we showed that behavioral changes caused by motivational operation to HRL were similar to those of animal operant behaviors (Podlesnik et al, 2006; Shull, 2004; Shull et al, 2001).…”