Habitual responses are retrieved from memory, not triggered reflexively

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/gncsf
• Publication Date: 2023-11-02T05:00:38Z
• Authors: Yue Du; Adrian Haith
• Keywords: Automaticity; Stimulus (psychology); Association (psychology); Automatism (medicine)

Habits are inflexible patterns of behavior that so well engrained we often can’t help ourselves from performing them. Habitual actions widely thought to be directly triggered by specific cues via an automatic, reflex-like stimulus–response association, especially if these responses generated very rapidly. Here propose, alternatively, habitual might retrieved memory. A hallmark retrieval-based action selection is the time needed generate a should depend on number possible required – in contrast more direct and reflexive mechanisms, where respond invariant. Through series experiments, tested nature visuomotor association task human participants. After extensively practicing novel participants developed robust habits. The speed at which were selected increased with potential stimuli/responses, consistent memory retrieval inconsistent association. Our results question commonly-held view behavior, clarify how concepts habit automaticity relate one another.