Memory, Habits and Cues (original) (raw)
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The Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2017
Analysis of the concept of habit has been relatively neglected in the contemporary analytic literature. This paper is an attempt to rectify this lack. The strategy begins with a description of some paradigm cases of habit which are used to derive five features as a basis for an explicative definition. It is argued that habits are social, acquired through repetition, enduring, environmentally activated, and automatic. The enduring nature of habits is captured by their being dispositions of a certain sort. This is a realist account of habits in so far as the dispositions put forward must fit with some recognizable underlying system-in the case of humans a biological system-to fill the role as set out by the definition. This role is wide-ranging; in addition to the familiar cases of habitual behavior, habitual activities also include thinking, perceiving, feeling and willing.
Annual Review of Psychology, 2016
As the proverbial creatures of habit, people tend to repeat the same behaviors in recurring contexts. This review characterizes habits in terms of their cognitive, motivational, and neurobiological properties. In so doing, we identify three ways that habits interface with deliberate goal pursuit: First, habits form as people pursue goals by repeating the same responses in a given context. Second, as outlined in computational models, habits and deliberate goal pursuit guide actions synergistically, although habits are the efficient, default mode of response. Third, people tend to infer from the frequency of habit performance that the behavior must have been intended. We conclude by applying insights from habit research to understand stress and addiction as well as the design of effective interventions to change health and consumer behaviors.
To investigate the process of habit formation in everyday life, 96 volunteers chose an eating, drinking or activity behaviour to carry out daily in the same context (for example 'after breakfast') for 12 weeks. They completed the self-report habit index (SRHI) each day and recorded whether they carried out the behaviour. The majority (82) of participants provided sufficient data for analysis, and increases in automaticity (calculated with a subset of SRHI items) were examined over the study period. Nonlinear regressions fitted an asymptotic curve to each individual's automaticity scores over the 84 days. The model fitted for 62 individuals, of whom 39 showed a good fit. Performing the behaviour more consistently was associated with better model fit. The time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days; indicating considerable variation in how long it takes people to reach their limit of automaticity and highlighting that it can take a very long time. Missing one opportunity to perform the behaviour did not materially affect the habit formation process. With repetition of a behaviour in a consistent context, automaticity increases following an asymptotic curve which can be modelled at the individual level. Performing an action for the first time requires planning, even if plans are formed only moments before the action is performed, and attention. As behaviours are repeated in consistent settings they then begin to proceed more efficiently and with less thought as control of the behaviour transfers to cues in the environment that activate an automatic response: a habit. How long does it take to form a habit? This question is often asked by individuals who want to acquire healthy habits or those who want to promote behaviour change. However, we are not aware of any studies that have systematically investigated the habit formation process within individuals, and none have examined the development of 'real world' habitual behaviours. The past decade has seen a resurgence of interest in the topic of habitual behaviour within social psychology. There is still debate over how habits should be conceptualized and operationalized, but there is consensus that habits are acquired through incremental strengthening of the association between a situation (cue) and an action, i.e
Philosophia, 2017
Several authors have argued that the things one does in the course of skilled and habitual activity present a difficult case for the ‘standard story’ of action: they are things intentionally done, but they do not seem to be suitably related to mental states. I suggest that once manifestations of habit are properly distinguished from exercises of bodily skills, we can see that habit raises a distinctive sort of problem. I examine certain responses that have been given, as well as responses that could be given on behalf of the standard story to the problems presented by manifestations of habit. These responses rely on the idea of a kind of intention that does not ensue from conscious thought or deliberation. I identify three different problems for this line of response. The conclusion is that habit explains aspects of human behavior that cannot be accounted by ascribing intentions of any kind. Keywords: Habit; bodily skill; standard story of action; subsidiary actions; automaticity.
Clarifying the Character of Habits: Understanding What and How They Explain
To appear in Habit: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Neurosciences to Social Sciences. Caruna, F and Testa, I (Eds). Cambridge University Press.
This paper aims to set the record straight about special sort of intelligence exhibited by habitual doings. It defends an enactivist account of habitual doings which, at its core, depicts habits as flexible and adjustable modes of response that are world-directed and context-sensitive. So understood, habits are wholly unlike the exercise of blind mechanisms or mindless reflexes. Nevertheless, we resist the familiar forced choice of thereby understanding habits in standard cognitivist terms. Our proposal aims to avoid the twin mistakes of either underintellectualizing or overintellectualizing habits. In tune with our enactivist elucidation of the core character of habits, the paper also explicates how habits, so conceived, can support and thwart our larger projects.
A genealogical map of the concept of habit
2014
The notion of information processing has dominated the study of the mind for over six decades. However, before the advent of cognitivism, one of the most prominent theoretical ideas was that of Habit. This is a concept with a rich and complex history, which is again starting to awaken interest, following recent embodied, enactive critiques of computationalist frameworks. We offer here a very brief history of the concept of habit in the form of a genealogical network-map. This serves to provide an overview of the richness of this notion and as a guide for further re-appraisal. We identify 77 thinkers and their influences, and group them into seven schools of thought. Two major trends can be distinguished. One is the associationist trend, starting with the work of Locke and Hume, developed by Hartley, Bain, and Mill to be later absorbed into behaviorism through pioneering animal psychologists (Morgan and Thorndike). This tradition conceived of habits atomistically and as automatisms (a conception later debunked by cognitivism). Another historical trend we have called organicism inherits the legacy of Aristotle and develops along German idealism, French spiritualism, pragmatism, and phenomenology. It feeds into the work of continental psychologists in the early 20th century, influencing important figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, and Gibson. But it has not yet been taken up by mainstream cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Habits, in this tradition, are seen as ecological, self-organizing structures that relate to a web of predispositions and plastic dependencies both in the agent and in the environment. In addition, they are not conceptualized in opposition to rational, volitional processes, but as transversing a continuum from reflective to embodied intentionality. These are properties that make habit a particularly attractive idea for embodied, enactive perspectives, which can now re-evaluate it in light of dynamical systems theory and complexity research. Keywords: habit, associationism, organicism, history of psychology, history of philosophy Frontiers in Human Neuroscience www.frontiersin.org A genealogical map of the concept of habit FIGURE 1 | Conceptual genealogies of the habit concept. The plot at top-left corner of the map displays the ngram of the terms "habit" and "representation" in non-fiction literature (in English) published between 1850 and 2008 and scanned by Google, see Michel et al. (2011) for more details. Green circles indicate positive contributors to the concept of habit. Red stars indicate breaks in the development or significance of the habit concept. A high definition version of the map can be found here: http://barandiaran.net/design/habit-map. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience www.frontiersin.org Frontiers in Human Neuroscience www.frontiersin.org
The Aristotelian conception of habit and its contribution to human neuroscience
The notion of habit used in neuroscience is an inheritance from a particular theoretical origin, whose main source is William James. Thus, habits have been characterized as rigid, automatic, unconscious, and opposed to goal-directed actions. This analysis leaves unexplained several aspects of human behavior and cognition where habits are of great importance. We intend to demonstrate the utility that another philosophical conception of habit, the Aristotelian, may have for neuroscientific research. We first summarize the current notion of habit in neuroscience, its philosophical inspiration and the problems that arise from it, mostly centered on the sharp distinction between goal-directed actions and habitual behavior. We then introduce the Aristotelian view and we compare it with that of William James. For Aristotle, a habit is an acquired disposition to perform certain types of action. If this disposition involves an enhanced cognitive control of actions, it can be considered a “habit-as-learning”. The current view of habit in neuroscience, which lacks cognitive control and we term “habit-as-routine”, is also covered by the Aristotelian conception. He classifies habits into three categories: 1) theoretical, or the retention of learning understood as “knowing that x is so”; 2) behavioral, through which the agent achieves a rational control of emotion-permeated behavior (“knowing how to behave”); and 3) technical or learned skills (“knowing how to make or to do”). Finally, we propose new areas of research where this “novel” conception of habit could serve as a framework concept, from the cognitive enrichment of actions to the role of habits in pathological conditions. In all, this contribution may shed light on the understanding of habits as an important feature of human action. Habits, viewed as cognitively controlled behaviors that in turn improve cognitive control of behavior, are a crucial resource for enhancing human learning and behavioral plasticity.
Habits: plasticity, learning and freedom
In present times, certain fields of science are becoming aware of the necessity to go beyond a restrictive specialization, and establish an open dialogue with other disciplines. Such is the case of the approach that neuroscience and philosophy are performing in the last decade. However, this increasing interest in a multidisciplinary perspective should not be understood, in our opinion, as a new phenomenon, but rather as a return to a classical standpoint: a proper understanding of human features –organic, cognitive, volitional, motor or behavioral, for example– requires a context that includes the global dimension of the human being. We believe that grand neuroscientific conclusions about the mind should take into account what philosophical reflection has said about it; likewise, philosophers should consider the organic constitution of the brain to draw inferences about the mind. Thus, both neuroscience and philosophy would benefit from each other’s achievements through a fruitful dialogue. One of the main problems a multidisciplinary group encounters is terminology: the same term has a different scope in various fields, sometimes even contradictory. Such is the case of habits: from a neuroscientific perspective, a habit is a mere automation of an action. It is, therefore, linked to rigidity and limitation. However, from a classical philosophical account, a habit is an enabling capacity acquired through practice, which facilitates, improves and reinforces the performance of certain kind of actions. From neuroscience, habit acquisition restricts a subject’s action to the learnt habit; from philosophy, habit acquisition allows the subject to set a distance from the simple motor performance to cognitively enrich the action. For example, playing piano is a technical habit; considering the neuroscientific account, a pianist would just play those sequences of keystrokes that had been repeatedly practiced in the past. However, according to the philosophical perspective, it would allow the pianist to improvise and, moreover, go beyond the movements of their hands to concentrate in other features of musical interpretation. In other words, a holistic view of habits focuses on the subject’s disposition when facing both known and novel situations. We believe neuroscience could contribute to achieve a deeper understanding of the neural bases of habits, whose complexity could be deciphered by a philosophical reflection. Thus, we propose this Research Topic to increase our understanding on habits from a wide point of view. This collection of new experimental research, empirical and theoretical reviews, general commentaries and opinion articles covers the following subjects: habit learning; implicit memory; computational and complex dynamical accounts of habit formation; practical, cognitive, perceptual and motor habits; early learning; intentionality; consciousness in habits performance; neurological and psychiatric disorders related to habits, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, stereotypies or addiction; habits as enabling or limiting capacities for the agent.
Introduction: Habitual Action, Automaticity, and Control
Topoi, 2021
William James once said that "ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night" (1899, pp. 65-66). Even if his estimation was wrong by half, habitual action would still be a tremendously pervasive feature of our agency. And yet, references to habitual action have been marginal at best in contemporary philosophy of action. This neglect is due, at least, to the combination of two ideas. The first is a widespread view of habit as entirely automatic, inflexible, and irresponsive to reasons. The second is philosophy of action's tendency (dominant at least since Anscombe and Davidson) to focus on explaining action by reference to reasons. Arguably, if habitual behavior is reasons-irresponsive, and if action is explained by reference to reasons, the study of habit would have very little to teach about action. Recently, however, there has been a surge in philosophical interest on habit and habitual action. Novel approaches are challenging the two ideas mentioned above, arguing that (1) habitual behavior is not entirely automatic or inflexible, but instead has a particular kind of flexibility and intentionality; and that (2) acting out of habit can count as a form of acting for reasons, even in the absence of the traditional rationalizing mental states: belief, desire, and intention. The essays contained in this issue move discussions forward in exciting new directions. In what follows we present each paper and situate it within its broader theoretical