Action Framing Modulates the Pavlovian Bias in Go and No-Go Learning

Reward- and punishment-associated (i.e., Pavlovian) cues can trigger specific responses that interfere with learning appropriate actions. Prior work has shown that reward impedes the learning of “no-go” responses, and punishment impedes the learning of “go” responses. This Pavlovian bias is theorized to arise at the motor level and may reflect a rigid coupling between reward and action activation and between punishment and action suppression. Contrary to this view, across two experiments testing adults (one preregistered, total N = 370), using behavioral analyses and computational modeling, we show that action framing strongly modulates Pavlovian bias. When go was framed as approach and no-go as avoidance, we replicated the typical asymmetry in learning. However, when go was framed as avoidance and no-go as approach, this Pavlovian bias disappeared in choice and was attenuated in response times. Pavlovian bias thus operates partly on a semantic level and is more flexible than often theorized.