Does the Value of a Response Always Reflect its Expected Utility or Can it be Influenced by Mere Co-occurrences with Past Outcomes?

According to goal-directed models of behavior causation, the degree to which an agent expects a response to lead to a valued outcome determines the value they attribute to it and their engagement in this response. Conversely, a response that is not expected to lead to a valued outcome should not be valued or enacted. However, it is conceivable that a response that used to lead to a positive outcome retains some degree of residual value from its past co-occurrences with the outcome. This idea stems from findings that an evaluative conditioning effect - a change in the valence of a conditional stimulus (CS) after having been paired with an unconditional stimulus (US) - can subsist even if the CS no longer signals the occurrence of the US. We tested whether the same principles apply to response values, that is, whether pairing a response with an outcome changes the value of the response in line with the value of the outcome and whether this value remains when the response is no longer paired with the outcome. The research design further allowed us to assess whether potential residual value stems from (a) an intact referential relation between the response and its past outcome or (b) a change in the intrinsic value of the response, and (c) whether such a residual value would be sufficient to elicit the response itself. The study used a novel task in which a learned contingency between a response and a valued outcome was removed and liking of and engagement in the response were compared to those of a response for which the same contingency was absent from the start. In line with goal-directed models, we did not observe residual liking nor responding for the response that previously led to the positive outcome relative to the response that never did.