The successor representation in high-risk drinking and alcohol-related contexts
Abstract
The successor representation (SR) is a reinforcement learning strategy which has been suggested to underlie nuanced forms of habitual behavior, rendering it a candidate mechanism for mental health conditions thought to involve habitual control, such as addiction. However, paradigms used to assess habits in humans cannot detect SR use. Together with the fact that they are usually conducted in disorder-irrelevant contexts, this may explain why the evidence for a hypothesized shift from goal-directed to habitual behavior in addiction is inconsistent. Here, we tested whether individuals with high-risk (n=260) compared to low-risk drinking behavior (n=260) rely more on SR or a rigid goal-based dimension-reduced SR variant, particularly in alcohol-related contexts. An online multi-stage decision-making task performed in either a virtual bar or apartment context allowed us to dissociate (red)SR from model-based and model-free learning strategies by testing how well participants adapted their choices to different types of distal changes in the environment. Findings suggest that a particular type of SR, namely a (reduced) random-policy SR-like strategy, contributes to human behavior, but that high-risk drinkers do not differ from low-risk drinkers in their use of this strategy. Instead, both groups seem to rely less on what is likely a (reduced) random-policy SR strategy in alcohol-related contexts – and instead more on model-free control. Results suggest that the use of an adaptive, resource-efficient decision-making strategy is selectively downregulated in substance-related contexts. This study highlights the importance of considering contextual modulation and nuanced decision strategies in understanding habitual and goal-directed behavior in mental health conditions such as addiction.
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BibTeX
@misc{musial2026successor,
title = {{The successor representation in high-risk drinking and alcohol-related contexts}},
author = {Milena Philomena Maria Musial and Sam Hall-McMaster and Kanji Shimomura and Ayaka Kato and Erik Lukas Bode and Clarissa Grundmann and Claudia Ebrahimi and Kenji Morita and Samuel J. Gershman and Tanja Endrass},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/rmdqk_v6},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/rmdqk_v6/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The successor representation in high-risk drinking and alcohol-related contexts
AU - Milena Philomena Maria Musial
AU - Sam Hall-McMaster
AU - Kanji Shimomura
AU - Ayaka Kato
AU - Erik Lukas Bode
AU - Clarissa Grundmann
AU - Claudia Ebrahimi
AU - Kenji Morita
AU - Samuel J. Gershman
AU - Tanja Endrass
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/rmdqk_v6
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/rmdqk_v6/
AB - The successor representation (SR) is a reinforcement learning strategy which has been suggested to underlie nuanced forms of habitual behavior, rendering it a candidate mechanism for mental health conditions thought to involve habitual control, such as addiction. However, paradigms used to assess habits in humans cannot detect SR use. Together with the fact that they are usually conducted in disorder-irrelevant contexts, this may explain why the evidence for a hypothesized shift from goal-directed to habitual behavior in addiction is inconsistent. Here, we tested whether individuals with high-risk (n=260) compared to low-risk drinking behavior (n=260) rely more on SR or a rigid goal-based dimension-reduced SR variant, particularly in alcohol-related contexts. An online multi-stage decision-making task performed in either a virtual bar or apartment context allowed us to dissociate (red)SR from model-based and model-free learning strategies by testing how well participants adapted their choices to different types of distal changes in the environment. Findings suggest that a particular type of SR, namely a (reduced) random-policy SR-like strategy, contributes to human behavior, but that high-risk drinkers do not differ from low-risk drinkers in their use of this strategy. Instead, both groups seem to rely less on what is likely a (reduced) random-policy SR strategy in alcohol-related contexts – and instead more on model-free control. Results suggest that the use of an adaptive, resource-efficient decision-making strategy is selectively downregulated in substance-related contexts. This study highlights the importance of considering contextual modulation and nuanced decision strategies in understanding habitual and goal-directed behavior in mental health conditions such as addiction.
ER -