Goal-directed and habitual learning

The vast majority of what we do in our everyday lives requires us to make some form of decision, from which route to take to work, to what we’re going to eat for dinner. Typically, we use two different strategies to guide our decision-making.

Sometimes, our decisions are based on knowledge of the outcomes our actions usually generate, and how much we want those outcomes. For example, you may decide to take a particular route to work because you know it is quicker, and you want to be on time. This type of behaviour is ‘goal-directed’ and it enables us great flexibility to alter our actions in light of change; you might decide to take a different route if you discover a road is closed.

However, if you took the same route to work everyday for an extended time, this action would become automatic or ‘habitual’. The advantage of this is that it is much quicker than goal-directed behaviour - you don’t have to think too much about it! However, it is also inflexible; you might automatically start to follow your usual work route even if it’s closed, because it’s what you’re used to doing.

Whilst neither form of decision-making is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, an imbalance between the two can create challenges. Specifically, if somebody engages less in goal-directed behaviour, they may be more likely to develop habits which can sometimes have adverse effects, as can be seen in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and eating disorders.

Considering this, Lisa is interested in how the balance between goal-directed and habitual behaviour contributes to overlapping traits in autism, Anorexia Nervosa (AN), and also OCD. To do this, she is using a decision-making task called the ‘two-step task’ which assesses how much someone uses each decision-making strategy to make choices.

Lisa’s first study is online and will compare performance on two different versions of the two-step task in a sample of neurotypical adult women, autistic individuals, and those with AN. Following this, Lisa hopes to use neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI]) to see how people’s brain activity differs when completing the two-step task.