From Action Initiation to Persistence: A Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer Analysis for Cue-Based Goal Pursuit

Previous research suggests that cues can motivate goal-directed behavior directly. According to the framework of human unconscious goal pursuit, exposure to goal-relevant cues yields two distinct behavioral effects: action initiation and subsequent action persistence. However, the evidence for such a full motivational control effect in human goal-directed behavior is meager. The present study builds on the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) approach to test the cue-based motivational control. We employed a tapping task that considers the speed of decreasing the distance between an outcome and oneself as an index of motivation of behavior. Thus, we could separate action initiation and persistence in one single test task. Participants first underwent instrumental and Pavlovian training. They learned to press two keys to earn 20 or 5 cents (high- or low-value outcomes) and to associate the two outcomes with two specific cues. Next, they had to press one of the two keys multiple times to bring a Pavlovian cue to the front of their computer screen. Results showed that participants responded faster with the high-value key to the high- versus low-value cue, indicating value-sensitive action initiation effects. However, this effect did not translate into action persistence, as the response time steeply declined over time. These results point to the importance of differentiating between action initiation and persistence of action in cue-based goal-directed behavior as modeled by PIT.