The March for Science was a great success in bringing scientists and non-scientists together, and making our voice heard. In fact, we talked to so many interested people that we almost lost our voices by the end of the day! Below some impressions of the day…
At the Habit Lab, we know how important science is. This Saturday, April 22nd, the March for Science is held all over the world, including in Amsterdam, to raise awareness about the importance of science for our community. The Habit Lab will be present to support the March for Science and to demonstrate what our research means for society! You can find us in one of the science tents, wheree we will demonstrate what we study, how we do research, and what its implications are for the community.
Check out the program and pay a visit to the science tents!
From April 11 to 13, the Associative Learning Symposium was held in Wales. In the beautiful, remote environment of the Gregynog Hall, this three-day symposium was filled with inspirational talks and discussions. Here, Poppy presented her recent work on insensitivity to devaluation after extended training in humans and Aukje presented a poster about the effects of different types of implementation intentions for breaking habits.
Our environment is full of cues signaling the availability of tasty, but often unhealthy, foods. In this paper, Poppy and colleagues report a recent study that examined the effect of food-associated stimuli on choice behavior in participants with healthy weight versus severe obesity. During a computerized test, participants were exposed to Pavlovian cues predictive of food pictures, and we examined their biasing effect on instrumental choice. For example, would a cue associated with crisps lead to a higher response rate for crisps (as opposed to, for example, lettuce)? Obese participants were indeed found to be more sensitive to high-calorie food cues relative to low-calorie cues. In contrast, healthy-weight individuals did not show a difference between the two food types. Therefore, this study supports the clinical relevance of this associative mechanism, and suggests that severely obese individuals are particularly sensitive to high-calorie food cues whereas low-calorie food cues have little effect on their behavior.
Follow this link to access the paper.
Reference: Watson, P. Wiers, R.W., Hommel, B., Gerdes, V.E.A., de Wit, S. (2017). Stimulus Control over Action for Food in Obese versus Healthy-weight Individuals, Frontiers in Psychology – Eating Behavior, doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00580
Follow this link to the Dutch press release
In the recently published ‘Wiley Handbook of Cognitive Control’, Sanne is the author of the chapter entitled ‘Control of Behaviour by Competing Learning Systems’. This chapter provides an overview of experimental research on goal-directed and habitual processes that control our behaviour.
More information? Check the Wiley website!
Reference: de Wit, S (2017). Control of Behaviour by Competing Learning Systems. In T. Egner (Ed.), The Wiley Handbook of Cognitive Control (pp. 190-206). Wiley-Blackwell
On February 2nd and 3rd, the ARPH (Association for Researchers in Psychology and Health) conference took place in Leiden. As every year, this conference provided a great overview of the state-of-the-art research concerning health psychology in the Netherlands and Belgium.
In the session concerning ‘Making healthy food choices’, Aukje presented her latest work, entitled ‘Why health warnings fail to change cue-elicited food-seeking behavior’. In this research she used a PIT task to demonstrate how stimuli in the environment interfere with goal-directed behavior, which could make health warnings ineffective in the presence of food-associated stimuli.
A new paper by Zsuzsika Sjoerds, Sanne de Wit and others is now in press comparing two widely used paradigms that assess aspects of goal-directed and habitual behavior; the two-step sequential decision-making and the slips-of-action paradigm. The findings demonstrate moderate support for a common framework to describe the propensity towards goal-directed behavior, but also suggest that each task assesses distinct aspects of goal-directed behavior.
In press in: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
Reference:
Sjoerds, Z., Dietrich, A., Deserno, L., De Wit, S., Villringer, A., Heinze, H.-J., et al. (in press). Slips of action and sequential decisions: A cross-validation study of tasks assessing habitual and goal-directed action control. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 10: 234.
This project was conducted by Anja Dietrich in the research group of Annette Horstmann at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. The balance between goal-directed and habitual action control was measured in a sample of normal-weight, overweight, and obese participants using the slips-of-action test. We failed to find evidence for a relationship between weight status and sensitivity to outcome devaluation in this test. Independent of weight status, we did observe lower sensitivity to devaluation in sensation seekers, a subtype of impulsivity. This ‘habit propensity’ in sensation seekers may account for previous reports of weak avoidance behavior and risky decision making. In conclusion, behavioral flexibility in the sense of general disturbances in the balance between the habitual and goal-directed systems seems to be unaffected by weight status. Future studies are needed to clarify the role of specific subtypes of obesity (e.g., food addiction).
Reference: Dietrich, A., De Wit, S., Horstmann, A. (2016). General habit propensity relates to the sensation seeking subdomain of impulsivity but not obesity. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 10, 213.
On Sunday October 30th, Sanne was a guest on Radio Swammerdam. The show was about habits and addiction. Sanne was interviewed about our research at the Habit Lab, and informed the listeners about habits and addiction. In addition, the show made a report on the Healthyways study with Aukje, which was broadcasted during the show.
Listen to the podcast here! (In Dutch)
Radio Swammerdam is the science program from Amsterdam FM.
Sanne and collaborators published new research examining the role of habit learning in individuals with Anorexia Nervosa. The findings from the paper suggest that individuals with AN do not show a general deficit in the balance between goal-directed and habitual control, which was investigated in two studies using a computerized outcome-devaluation task. The authors note that future research is warranted to examine possible disorder-specific habits among individuals with AN.
Follow this link to access the paper.
Reference: Godier, L. R., de Wit, S., Pinto, A., Steinglass, J. E., Greene, A. L., Scaife, J., … & Park, R. J. (2016). An investigation of habit learning in Anorexia Nervosa. Psychiatry Research, 244, 214-222.
On Tuesday October 25th, Sanne presented at the debate ‘Over gewicht in Amsterdam’. The debate was organized by SPUI25 and addressed the pressing issue of reducing obesity among children in Amsterdam. The topic was addressed by three discussants with a multidisciplinary background, including sociology (by Christian Bröer), psychology (Sanne) and anthropology (Else Vogel) and led to a lively debate among the discussants and the audience.
The Habit Lab was represented at Lowlands 2016! At the Lowlands Science tent, visitors of the festival demonstrated their creative skills in a monster-drawing task that was part of the study conducted by the Habit Lab.The winner of the monster contest will be announced via Facebook!
To goal of this study was to examine processes hindering or promoting creativity. It turned out to be a great success! A special thanks to all the enthusiastic participants and great volunteers!
The Habit Lab is going to conduct research at Lowlands! Lowlands, a large-scale three-day festival held from August 19 to August 21 , is one of the most important festivals of the Netherlands. As part of this festival, the event Lowlands Science is organized. Nine research teams will conduct a study in which Lowlands visitors can participate. The study conducted by our lab group will be about processes that promote or hinder creativity. Participants will show their most creative side during a creativity task in which they will search for a new monster that haunts Lowlands…
If you are visiting Lowlands, make sure to drop by at the Lowlands Science tent!
More info about the project: lowlands.nl/programma/monsterlijk-creatief
More info about Lowlands Science: lowlands.nl/programma/monsterlijk-creatief/#category-Lowlands_Science
UvA news: www.uva.nl
Lowlands Science wordt georganiseerd door BKB, New Scientist en Lowlands en wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door IBM, De Hersenstichting, SIA en KNAW.
To celebrate the accomplishments of this academic year, we organized a Dutch-style Habit Lab “borrel” last Friday.
It was a sunny afternoon, with a nice pick nick in the park, during which we reflected on a successful academic year while already looking forward to the projects that will come next.
Cheers to a great academic year. Enjoy the summer!
On Wednesday July 6th, the Habit Event took place at the International School Groningen. The day started with an educational talk on habits by Sanne. This was followed by interactive workshops on diverse aspect on habits and how to break them, including ‘Train your brain’ (by Poppy), ‘Planning to turn good intentions into good habits’ (by Aukje), and ‘Bootcamp’ (by Sebastian). Then, it was time for the Habit Games. During these games, the students found out themselves how habits work and how difficult it is to change your routines. The day ended with the award ceremony. The Habit Games were won by the all-boys team number 6! What an interesting, active and educational day it was!
This meeting was part of the Attention & Performance meetings that started in 1966. This 27th meeting took place during the 9th-12th of June ’16 in “Priorij Corsendonck” (Oud-Turnhout, Belgium). The organizing committee consisted of Marcel Brass, Jan De Houwer, Christian Büchel, Senne Braem and Baptist Liefooghe.
The theme of the meeting concerned the implications and applications of learning via instructions:
Unlike other animals, humans have the unique ability to share and use verbal instructions to prepare for upcoming tasks. For example, using language we can learn without trial and error the route to a new city, how to build a cabinet, or how to prepare a meal. Furthermore, instructions also indirectly influence our behaviour. For example, knowledge about the efficiency of a medical treatment can change the effects of this treatment. Although verbal instructions are omnipresent in daily life and psychological research, the mechanisms via which they influence behaviour are still poorly understood. In this meeting, we bring together different experts from a variety of disciplines, from fear conditioning to cognitive control, using different manipulations, from stimulus-response instructions to hypnotic suggestions, to study the omnipresent effect of verbal instructions on brain and behaviour.
On Wednesday, July 6th, the Habit Lab will organize a habit event at the International School Groningen. This special event involves a whole day of learning about habits, engaging in interesting workshops on breaking and making healthy habits, and participating in interactive habit games.
Check the program here!
On Wednesday the 29th, the poster fair of the Health Psychology master took place (Psychologie van Gezondheidsgedrag) at the University of Amsterdam. Of these students, five were involved in Habit Lab’s Healthyways project, and also presented their findings. It was a very successful afternoon with interesting research, a lot of room for discussion and many tasty (healthy and unhealthy) home-made snacks!
The 3rd European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ESCAN) meeting took place in Porto this year (23-26th of June). Sanne took part in a symposium organised by Henk van Steenbergen of the University of Leiden – together with Jan Glascher, Mara Mather, and Matthias Pessiglione, entitled: “how emotions drive attention and decision making”. Her talk focused on motivational influences on Pavlovian-instrumental transfer.
She also enjoyed Porto’s Festa da Sa Joao on the 23d of June during which people hit random strangers on the head with plastic hammers.
Link to ESCAN:
sites.google.com/site/escaneurosci/
New research demonstrating the role of habit learning in cocaine addicts is now published in Science. You can find the article on the Science website.
Reference:
Ersche, K.D., Gillan, C.M., Jones, P.M., Williams, G.B., Ward, L.H.E., Luijten, M., de Wit, S., Sahakian, B.J., Bullmore, E.T., Robbins, T.W. (2016). Carrots and sticks fail to change behavior in cocaine addiction. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf3700
This research also gained attention in the media:
– www.sciencenews.org
– www.eurekalert.org
– www.uva.nl
New research demonstrates that bias toward habits is associated with nonclinical Obsessive-Compulsive symptom dimensions. The article is published in Psychiatry Research.
Link: http://www.psy-journal.com/article/S0165-1781(16)30690-4/pdf
Reference: Snorrason, I., Lee, H. J., de Wit, S., & Woods, D. W. (2016). Are Nonclinical Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms Associated with Bias toward Habits? Psychiatry Research.
On April 21st, Poppy Watson successfully defended her thesis entitled ‘From Outcomes to Actions: Fundamental mechanisms in reward seeking’. The committee was impressed with the vast amount of high quality work reported in this thesis. Poppy conducted her PhD at the Dept. of Developmental Psychology at UvA, under supervision of Prof. Reinout Wiers, Prof. Bernhard Hommel, and Dr. Sanne de Wit. Poppy will continue her career as a postdoctoral researcher in the HabitLab. Congratulations dr. Poppy!
Dr Lee Hogarth (Exeter University, UK) will give the Rita Vuyk lecture titled “What dimension of drug conditioning is most closely associated with individual differences in level of drug dependence? Identifying the core learning process in addiction” on Wednesday 20th April at 4pm in room G -1.08. Dr Lee Hogarth is an experimental psychologist studying the learning mechanisms that underpin human addictive behavior. At the intersection of behavioral neuroscience and clinical psychology he has systematically and critically examined the role that attention to external drug cues plays in the control of drug-seeking behavior, the decision processes by which external drug cues control drug-seeking behavior and the role of habits in addiction. During his lecture he will discuss recent research focused on identifying the core learning process(es) that underlie human addictive behavior.
Click here to visit Dr Hogarth’s personal website.
At the end of March, Poppy Watson attended the Gregynog Associative Learning Conference in Wales. A small intimate conference, the highlights for her were talks from Andrew Nelson (Cardiff University) about whether goal-tracking and sign-tracking can be considered stable behavioral traits in animals, Mike le Pelley (UNSW) about maladaptive attentional capture by reward related stimuli and Ian McLaren’s lecture on the evidence for propositional vs associative mechanisms (or both) underlying human behavior.