This study examined sources of variability in habitual physical activity of children, and the minimum number of days required for estimating children's habitual physical activity levels using pedometers. A total of 31 children wore two pedometers during five weekdays and four weekend days. A two random facet completely crossed design was conducted with two-way analysis of variances across weekd...

Information processing is generally biased toward global cues, often at the expense of local information. Equivocal extant data suggests that arousal states may accentuate either a local or global processing bias, at least partially dependent on the nature of the manipulation, task, and stimuli. To further differentiate the conditions responsible for such equivocal results we varied caffeine do...

BACKGROUND Human and animal work suggests a shift from goal-directed to habitual decision-making in addiction. However, the evidence for this in human alcohol dependence is as yet inconclusive. METHODS Twenty-six healthy controls and 26 recently detoxified alcohol-dependent patients underwent behavioral testing with a 2-step task designed to disentangle goal-directed and habitual response pat...

Implementation intentions specifying the replacement of a habitual response with an alternative response in a critical situation can overrule habits. In three experiments the cognitive effects of such counterhabitual implementation intentions were investigated. Results showed that implementation intentions eliminated the cognitive advantage of the habitual means in the "horse race" with the alt...

Sleep-related breathing disorders range from habitual snoring to severe obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. The prevalence of habitual snoring is high and up to 60 % depending on age, sex and body weight. However, in contrast to habitual snoring obstructive sleep apnea syndrome may be associated with medical complications. The prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea is 2 – 5 % of the adult populati...

Recent studies point to two likely explanations for habitual voting. The first is that voting causes psychological changes that make individuals more likely to view themselves as “voters.” The other asserts that voting eases institutional barriers, making future voting less costly. These mechanisms lead to divergent expectations about when and where we should observe habitual voting that are us...

This research examines habitual entrepreneurship as undertaken by those currently creating a new firm and those who recently had. The suggestion is that habitual entrepreneurs have different motivations for firm creation, take different actions during the process, and have different expectations for outcomes, as compared to novices. Data drawn from a random sample of over 1100, nascent and new ...

Understanding the effects of motivation on instrumental action selection, and specifically on its two main forms, goal-directed and habitual control, is fundamental to the study of decision making. Motivational states have been shown to 'direct' goal-directed behavior rather straightforwardly towards more valuable outcomes. However, how motivational states can influence outcome-insensitive habi...