Perez, O. D.; Merlo, E.; Oh, S.; Arenas, J.; Dickinson, A.

Goal-directed actions are those performed with the expectation of producing a specific outcome and are therefore sensitive to changes in the outcome's current value without re-experiencing the action-outcome contingency. In this study, we examined whether human action remains value-sensitive after experiencing the removal of the action-outcome contingency. Across two experiments, participants were trained to perform different actions for distinct outcomes before the outcomes were omitted for the target actions in the extinction experiment and presented independently of responding in the non-contingent experiment. One outcome was then devalued before responding was tested in the absence of outcome presentations. An overall analysis revealed that outcome devaluation decreased responding in this test to a degree that was not significantly reduced by either the extinction or non-contingent training. These experiments replicate with human participants the insensitivity of outcome devaluation to response extinction initially reported by Rescorla (1993) with rats and extend it to non-contingent training.