23
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      A genealogical map of the concept of habit

      review-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          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.

          Related collections

          Most cited references10

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface.

          The present model outlines the mechanisms underlying habitual control of responding and the ways in which habits interface with goals. Habits emerge from the gradual learning of associations between responses and the features of performance contexts that have historically covaried with them (e.g., physical settings, preceding actions). Once a habit is formed, perception of contexts triggers the associated response without a mediating goal. Nonetheless, habits interface with goals. Constraining this interface, habit associations accrue slowly and do not shift appreciably with current goal states or infrequent counterhabitual responses. Given these constraints, goals can (a) direct habits by motivating repetition that leads to habit formation and by promoting exposure to cues that trigger habits, (b) be inferred from habits, and (c) interact with habits in ways that preserve the learned habit associations. Finally, the authors outline the implications of the model for habit change, especially for the self-regulation of habit cuing. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Coordination of actions and habits in the medial prefrontal cortex of rats.

            As animals learn novel behavioural responses, performance is maintained by two dissociable influences. Initial responding is goal-directed and under voluntary control, but overtraining of the same response routine leads to behavioural autonomy and the development of habits that are no longer voluntary or goal-directed. Rats normally show goal-directed performance after limited training, indexed by sensitivity to changes in the value of reward, but this sensitivity to goal value is lost with extended training. Rats with selective lesions of the prelimbic medial prefrontal cortex showed no sensitivity to goal value after either limited or extended training, whereas rats with lesions of the infralimbic region of the medial prefrontal cortex showed the opposite pattern of deficit, a marked sensitivity to goal value after both limited and extended training. This double-dissociation suggests that the prelimbic region is responsible for voluntary response performance and the infralimbic cortex mediates the incremental ability of extended training to override this goal-directed behaviour.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness.

              Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The outside world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Several lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual "filling in," visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Hum Neurosci
                Front Hum Neurosci
                Front. Hum. Neurosci.
                Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1662-5161
                21 July 2014
                2014
                : 8
                : 522
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Department of Philosophy, University School of Social Work, UPV/EHU University of the Basque Country Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
                [2] 2Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, IAS-Research Center for Life, Mind, and Society, UPV/EHU University of the Basque Country Donostia - San Sebastián, Spain
                [3] 3Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science Bilbao, Spain
                [4] 4Department of Informatics, Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, University of Sussex Brighton, UK
                Author notes

                Edited by: Jose Ignacio Murillo, University of Navarra, Spain

                Reviewed by: Nathaniel Frost Barrett, Institute for Culture and Society, Spain; Clare Carlisle, King's College London, UK

                *Correspondence: Xabier E. Barandiaran, Escuela Universitaria de Trabajo Social, UPV/EHU University of the Basque Country, Dpto. de Filosofía, C/ Los Apraiz, 2. 01006 – Vitoria-Gasteiz, Araba, Spain e-mail: xabier.academic@ 123456barandiaran.net

                This article was submitted to the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

                Article
                10.3389/fnhum.2014.00522
                4104486
                465ca2b8-8159-4afb-bd04-2b8259d46781
                Copyright © 2014 Barandiaran and Di Paolo.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 30 March 2014
                : 27 June 2014
                Page count
                Figures: 1, Tables: 1, Equations: 0, References: 39, Pages: 7, Words: 5493
                Categories
                Neuroscience
                Mini Review Article

                Neurosciences
                habit,associationism,organicism,history of psychology,history of philosophy
                Neurosciences
                habit, associationism, organicism, history of psychology, history of philosophy

                Comments

                Comment on this article