Terminology and Phraseology: Understanding the Language of the Attending Theory of Motivation

Some terms are explained later in the text. Here is a brief introduction to a general understanding of the text.

As the existing language and terminology is often not sufficient to explain how habits, especially so-called addictions, work internally and how they can be dissolved, the development of a more detailed terminology was essential.

This terminology should make it possible to speak generically about any behavior. It can be used, for example, to make statements that refrain from using concrete, often emotionally charged or socially prejudiced terms.

Sentences such as “The smoker smokes a cigarette”, “The alcoholic is getting drunk”, “The junkie takes a shot” or – more trivially – “The person opens a door” can thus be formulated in a standardized way: “The attender actualizes an attending”.

In addition to generalization, it also serves for differentiation. The linguistic decoding of complex habitual behaviors requires a refined representation of the use of the term “goal”.

If we want to understand and describe the processes in our thinking and in our brain, we must take into account that the brain does not follow the same logic as the human being as a whole. An average person strives for happiness, while their brain strives for survival. Our brain makes us do things that it considers important. Happiness is not important for survival.

It is often counterproductive to explain our behavior using language that corresponds to the logic of our conscious thinking.

Bearing this in mind, the terminology of the ATM is intended as a basis for speaking in the language of the brain itself. 

The prime example of this may be the avoidance of the term ‘reward center’. The concept of a reward circuit can be misleading. Humans may strive for rewards, but our brains do not. Brains, in contrast, seek the repetition of the events that once led to the reward not the reward itself.

What is the reward for the guinea pig if given a piece of sugar for completing a task? From the point of view of an observer, it would be the sugar, from the point of view of the guinea pig, it would be the receiving of the sugar, but from the point of view of the guinea pig’s brain, it would be the eating of the sugar. However, the enjoying of the sugar would not be an effect in form of a reward but a cause for futural reward-seeking.

 According to Attending Theory of Motivation, “reward” is not the key element of reinforcement learning. Rather, it is “meaning” or “importance” in the sense of subjectively assessed significance. Assessed by conscious and unconscious thinking, manifesting itself in Motive-Power.

Furthermore, the term “reward center” suggests that all behavior is mainly positively motivated. This suggests that fears shape our motivations less strongly if at all, which is obviously not the case.

In the context of the ATM, with the term “reward”, we would be also referring to the Motive-Actualization of negative motives. The reward here would be the avoidance of negative experiences.

Dishabitization:

“Dishabitization” means the actual dissolution of a habit or also the healing of an addiction. Not to be confused with dishabituation or dehabitization.

Attender:

The attender refers to the person or animal who engages in or performs a specific behavior. In various contexts, the attender can be identified as the subject, consumer, user, smoker, addict, agent, or simply the individual undertaking the action.

Attending:

This moment of the attending is not merely a passive observation but an active interaction with the immediate environment, shaped by the individual’s underlying motives, desires, and situational context.

In the framework of habits, the attending is the core event that the attender (the individual experiencing it) anticipates, desires, and strives to achieve. It is through the attending that the Motive-Actualization process unfolds, as habits are reinforced by fulfilling the underlying motives—whether they involve seeking rewards or avoiding discomfort.

The concept of attending highlights the dynamic relationship between perception, motivation, and behavior, emphasizing its pivotal role in the continuation or dissolution of habits and addictions.

Attentive:

An “attentive” is, in most cases, the physical object of desire needed to actualize an attending.  Just as ingredients must be added in the right way, at the right temperature and at the right time when cooking, so too must the attentives be selected and be actualized in the right way to actualize an attending.

Sometimes attentives are not physical, such as knowing a foreign language when the attending would be “having a conversation with a native speaker”.

Dissolvement of a habit: With this the ATM claims to offer a way to reset an attender. Even a smoker for example can dissolve their addiction and will not experience cue-reactivity and relapse if he wishes to smoke a single cigarette once in a while.

Normally, one talks about getting rid of a habit or learning to deal with it. However, in this text, the term “dissolution” is consciously used instead. This is intended to linguistically acknowledge that dishabitization is not about learning to live with a habit or addiction, but rather about completely breaking it down. Just as a substance can be completely dissolved through chemical processes.

Goals:

According to the American Psychological Association, the goal is the “end state” of a goal-directed behavior.

The ATM often uses the term “chain of cues and goals”. In addition to many subgoals, the ATM distinguishes between three main goals that mark the end of each phase of a Motive-Actualization-Cycle.

Particular emphasis is placed on the distinction between two different end goals. One is the goal of the process, the “Attending-Actualization” and the other is the goal of outcome, the “Motive-Actualization.”

Power:

This text strives for linguistic standardization of all factors influencing behavior. It attempts to define all motivational forces as far as possible as “power” and Power-Modulators.

For example, the terms “drive” or “wanting” are primarily expressed by “Attending-Actualization-power”.

Cue-Power:

The ATM defines Cue-Power exclusively via predictivity.

Feeling vs Emotion:

In everyday language, these terms are often used interchangeably. In this text, however, they are defined as follows: Feelings are the perception of bodily sensations, while emotions are the perception of sensations resulting from social bonding and interactions with other individuals or groups.

Goal-Directed-Behavior:

The ATM considers all behavior (apart from phenomena such as reflexes or tics, etc.) as “goal-directed behavior”. Every contraction of a muscle, every thought that is actively thought, pursues a certain goal-actualization. This of course applies to the conscious achievement of goals, but also to automatic and unconscious behavior.

Habitual Behavior:

A habitual behavior, a habit, is sometimes referred to as “double-processed behavior” because it involves both conscious and unconscious processes. (Caporale & Dan, 2008)

In contrast to automatism, habits are usually associated with complex chains of cues and goals. Similar to automatisms, they are a form of skill stored in procedural memory, from where they can be retrieved at will or be triggered automatically.

Most human behaviors are habitual and are presented in this text as Motive-Actualization-Cycles.

Direction-Finding-Process:

The concept of the Direction-Finding-Process is very similar to what is referred to in the context of goal-directed behavior as planning, problem solving or means-end analysis.

These concepts suggest a conscious-analytical approach, while the concept of the Direction-Finding-Process also includes unconscious factors (powers coming from feelings and emotions).

In this way, the Direction-Finding-Process can lead the individual in a different direction than would correspond to their cognitive planning or problem solving. In this case, you may be acting against your own mind.

The concept of the Direction-Finding-Process emphasizes that certain directions are not taken from a standstill. Rather, the attender is in motion at all times and merely changes direction. In contrast to active planning, the Direction-Finding-Process is therefore more of a passive process.

Motive-Actualization-Cycle:

This conceptualization is intended to serve the internal coherence of the ATM as well as the linguistically logical structure of understanding behavior.

Similar but different concepts are already in use, such as the “habit loop” and the “behavior cycle”. The habit loops described by Charles Duhigg focus on the specific components of a habit, namely cue, routine and reward. Behavioral cycles, as discussed by Howard Rachlin and other behavioral scientists, tend to emphasize the broader patterns of behavior and the interaction between short-term desires and long-term goals. (Rachlin, 2004) (Charles Duhigg, 2012)

The term “Motive-Actualization-Cycle” was created for being able to comprehensively analyze and describing what a habit constitutes of.

Pruning-MAC:

The ATM uses this term to allude to “synaptic pruning”. Pruning takes place when the brain continues to develop and absorb new information.

Initially, the brain forms many connections between neurons, but over time the weaker or less frequently used connections are selectively eliminated, a process known as “synaptic pruning”, which is a subset of the better known “neuroplasticity”.(Hebb, 1949)

In this way, the brain can strengthen and refine the remaining connections so that they are more efficient and effective for the transmission of information.(Peter R. Huttenlocher, 1997)

In the case of the Pruning-MAC here, however, it is the attender itself that directs the pruning specifically with its will.

In addition, it can be said that habits are being pruned by a Pruning-MAC.

Withdraw-MAC and Outdraw-Cue:

“With” comes from Middle English; “wiþ” means “against” and “draw” comes from “dragan” and means “to pull” or “to move”.

Similarly, the term “Outdraw-Cue” should mean the end of the intermittent withdrawal. To pull (draw) the Attender out of the withdrawal phase.

“The Wanting” and “the Liking”:

In the ATM, “the wanting” and “the liking” refer analogously to their use in the “Incentive Sensitization Theory” proposed by Kent Berridge and Terry Robinson in 1993. (Robinson & Berridge, 1993)

With the Incentive Sensitization Theory, the two scientists describe “liking” and “wanting” as two separate but interconnected processes that play a role in the development of habitual and addictive behavior.

In this text, “Motive-Power” comes close to “the liking” or “the disliking”, while “Attending-Actualization-power” corresponds to “the wanting”.

Brain-Time:

The brain knows no past. In everyday life, people distinguish between the past, the present and the future. For the brain, however, there are not three, but only two different states of time. The first is the “here and now” and the second is the future.

Everything is a potential future, which it constantly tries to predict. A new experience becomes a mental representation, which is a memory for the person, whose logic assigns it to the category of the past. For the brain, however, this mental representation is a potential future.

Memories are merely information that, together with imagination and creativity, are building blocks for possible futures. They are not needed by the brain as an accurate representation of what has happened – they are meant to be a representation of what is likely to happen in the future in the appropriate contexts.

Even the reality of the present moment is a potentially recurring future. Thus, every new experience is treated as cyclical. As it is made and afterwards, its value is encoded according to its importance.(Schacter et al., 2017)

In the process of MAC formation, valence coding begins at the moment the experience is made and continues afterwards, both consciously and unconsciously. Relevant events that preceded the experience are recalled from memory. Their mental representations become cues by being encoded with valence.

After the moment of experiencing the experience, from the brain’s point of view, the experience lies in the relatively distant future. Relatively distant future here means the duration of one of the MACs associated with it. Since it has just been made, the MAC, which has now entered its passive phase, must first be passed through again.

Before the experience is repeated, the entire cycle is normally run through. For example, after eating, the experience of “tasting good” becomes the distant future for the brain instead of the near past.

In contrast, when the Motive-Actualization-Cycle comes to the end of its passive phase, the experience becomes the near future. In the example above, the cycle closes with the next meal of the food that caused the “taste”. So, before the meal begins, what we would call the “past” or “memory” is the near potential future for our brain. After the meal, the cycle repeats itself, the “taste” is now again a relatively distant potential future.

The brain knows no time. When we use watches, we utilize a conceptualization of the idea that time is measurable. With Einstein we started to wrap our heads around the fact that time is relative to the individual and space. How would the brain know of such things? Brain-Time is measured in the occurrence of attendings. As the occurrence of many attendings follow certain rhythms like the circadian or the repetitive appearance of the days of the week, attendings are often liked to our concept of time.

Examples of the Use of some of the Key Terms

Simplified, the following sentence could abstract various facts and thus discuss them generically: “The attender strives for Attending-Actualization in order to actualize the motive.” Here are three possible contexts:

1) The rat (attender) presses the lever to get the sugar, consume it (Attending-Actualization) and enjoy it (Motive-Actualization).

2) The artist is painting a picture to sell to an important Art gallery to feel good about being famous.

3) The user injects heroin to get high to relieve the inner pain.

The general ATM

The general Attending Theory of Motivation is a model of how behavior of higher animals is motivated and performed.

According to the “general ATM”, behavior always has the goal of at least one Attending-Actualization, the power of which has its origin in at least one motive.

All goal-directed behavior is thus part of at least one Motive-Actualization-Cycle (MAC).

The Decision-Making-Process

Since the focus of the Attending Theory of Motivation (ATM) is on human behavior, the decision-making processes of other animals will not be explored in detail here. However, the general ATM assumes that decision-making, across species, operates on similar principles, where choices are influenced by the relative strength of various Attending-Actualization-powers.

In this framework, the body-mind complex consistently prioritizes the attending with the greatest Attending-Actualization-power at any given moment. This suggests that behavior is not random but directed toward the path that holds the strongest motivational pull, whether conscious or unconscious.

(Please see: Attending-Actualization-Power and The Special Decision-Making Process)

The Direction-Finding-Process

After the “decision” for an attending or its actualization has been made, the Direction-Finding-Process begins with the assigning of the corresponding cues and goals.

The interplay between the decision-making-process and the direction-finding-process determines which goals are to be actualized.

In contrast to the decision-making process, in which the rational mind only plays a certain part in decision-making, as do emotions and feelings, it is often dominant in the direction-making-process.

Together, conscious and unconscious thought determine this chain of cues and goals for the attender to follow. Predictive cues that occur are not only followed, but actively sought by the attender in order to succeed in the goal-directed behavior, just as a driver looks for road signs to reach their destination.

The direction along the chains of cues and goals is maintained until the goal of Attending-Actualization is reached. Exceptions to maintaining the direction can be the occurrence of unexpected obstacles or a cognitive veto.

In general, there are only two possible directions: Towards to and away from. Towards to potentially positive and away from potentially negative experiences are the two directions encoded in each motive.

All behavior is geared towards either making, repeating or avoiding experiences.

Basically, humans function no differently than a blind worm at the bottom of the sea: Good taste: Swallow down! Bad taste: Spit out! Good smell: Open mouth! Bad smell: Close mouth! Looks good: Turn towards! Looks bad: Turn away! Feels good: Move towards! Feels bad: Move away from!

The attender is driven by Attending-Actualization-Powers which are basically the sum of positive Motive-Powers minus negative-Motive-Powers. In addition, various power-modulators are influencing the result.

Normally various active MACs are influencing the direction of the attender at any given moment. (see figure 3)

There is no standstill. Even if our bodies are not moving by themselves, we are moved by the rotational force of the earth, the solar system, etc. Everything in the universe moves relative to everything else.

The same applies to present and future attending. Even when we are asleep, the Attender that we are moves in the direction of the Attending “getting up”. One of the next possible attendings in this direction would be “eating breakfast”. Perhaps “making a phone call” is another attending that we move towards overnight.

The direction-making-process navigates the attender by following the cues towards the goal of the Attending-Actualization-cycles.  It is also constantly on the lookout for other cues with high predictive power to integrate into this process. The brain does not distinguish whether the attender is moving towards an attending or whether an attending is moving towards the attender.

Figuratively, you could imagine that the attender is a spaceship and the attendings are gas planets.  Both would either attract or repel each other like two-pole magnets. The spaceship follows the positive attractive forces of the planets with its negative polarity in its movement.

These gas planets that could be traversed, which the spaceship would do with an attending. This would be Attending-Actualization while Motive-Actualization would be the actual influence the gas has onto the spaceship, the experience the attender has with this attending.

The gas mixture of these planets would each consist of a positive and a negative component. If the positive component is predominant, it attracts the spaceship; conversely, it exerts repulsive forces on it if its negative components predominate.

The strength of the motives would make up for the size of the planet and thus for its gravitational pull or repulsion.

The spaceship moves as if it were being controlled by two vectors: On the one hand, the vector that points in the direction that results from the sum of the attractive forces. On the other hand, the second vector is directed towards the spaceship in the direction that would result from the sum of all repulsive forces.

The Motive-Actualization-Cycle (MAC)

Every experience that the attender has experienced for the first time, sought or accidentally made, is stored in memory in order to either repeat or avoid a similar experience in the future. In generalizing terms, if the experience was pleasant, a positive motive is formed; if the experience was unpleasant, a negative motive is formed.

However, on closer inspection, one positive and one negative motive are created for each individual experience.

Since every memory is a potential future attending, the brain expects the occurrence of an attending to be cyclical, in the form of an “experience cycle”, so to speak. As each experience generates two motives, one positive and one negative (see also: The Twin-Motive) and each motive in turn generates a MAC, there are two MACs emerging from each single experience. This is why the ATM does not speak of an experience cycle but of the “Motive-Actualization-Cycle (MAC)”.

Active and passive MACs

Figure 1 illustrates a Motive-Actualization-Cycle and its relationship to the attender. It aims to depict the cyclical nature of mental representations of experiences based on the brain’s logic, which often contrasts with the person’s conscious logic. While the individual’s logic perceives life as a linear progression, moving from past experiences, striving in the present, and seeking rewards in the future—the brain operates in cycles, continuously actualizing attendings in the present moment.

A black figure represents the attender. Their unconscious mind is absorbed with future attendings, only – represented by a Motive-Actualization-Cycle. Their feet are on the ground of the conscious thinking coming from the past heading towards futural rewards.

Elements of a MAC

The motive and the attending are like the head and the heart of a MAC.  While the attending is what you want or don’t want, the motive is what you like or dislike. These two are the cornerstones of motivation. The other elements of a MAC serve to actualize them.

Motives

A motive is basically the imagination of the fulfillment of a wish. There are two types of wishes: Either you want something to become reality or you want something not to become reality. In the brain, a motive is a mental representation of either having a certain positive experience or avoiding having a certain negative experience.

The attender wants to repeat what it likes (positive reinforcement learning) or avoid what it dislikes (negative reinforcement learning).

Mental representations of possible future experiences are created through memory and imagination.

Each motive has a valence of importance encoded with it: the Motive-Power.

The Twin Motive

For every experience, there are not just one but two motives: a positive motive, arising from the rewarding aspects of the experience, and its negative counterpart, stemming from the adverse aspects of the same experience. These two motives can differ in strength or balance each other out, depending on their relative power.

What benefits one part of the body-mind complex may simultaneously harm another. Every actualization of a goal comes at a cost. The brain “understands” this trade-off and represents it as two conflicting motives tied to the same experience: one driving repetition and the other driving avoidance of that experience.

As a result, two Motive-Actualization-Cycles (MACs) are formed—one associated with the positive motive and the other with the negative. People are often unaware of this duality because the stronger motive usually dominates perception.  Particularly because the difference in their strength normally is big. Thus, our conscience labels experiences according to the stronger motive.

The Attending

The “attending” is the main node in the network of all elements of human motivation and behavior. Linguistically, this takes into account the fact that a single goal-directed behavior pursues not just one, but several goals.

An attending can be “reading a text”, “smoking a cigarette”, “driving a car”, “eating in a restaurant” or “attending a play”. Basically, every experience, every deed and every thought are an attending.

Multiple Attendings and dual Functions

Typically, a person is involved in multiple “attendings” at any given moment. I’m riding the train holding my child and reading a cookbook and practicing my French because the book is written in French. Or I’m driving in my car thinking about you and drinking a coffee.

Exceptions to this are individual attending moments in which you are completely absorbed in the moment, in which time and self-perception seem to disappear.  It is what is called “being in the zone” in sport, for example, or the gamma wave state of the human brain in meditative states. This “flow state” is characterized by a heightened sense of concentration, clarity and immersion in the task at hand.  

An attending of one MAC can also be the attentive of another MAC. If eating a meal is the attending of a first MAC with the motive “satisfying hunger”, a second MAC with the motive “spending time with the family” could have the attending of the first MAC as its motive.

As a rule, different MACs power the same attending. The attending “drinking a glass of juice” can be a joint attending of MACs with the different motives “quench thirst”, “take vitamins”, “take glucose” and “enjoy something tasty”.

Attentives

An “attentive” is a means of actualization an attending. It is usually the object of desire, as it is required to initiate the Attending-Actualization.

One could speak of a kind of main attentive for a particular motive. In the case of the addiction of cigarette smoking with the “attending” of smoking, the main attentive would be the cigarette. It is what the attender subjectively identifies as the essential or necessary to satisfy their need.

Apart from that, and especially for the subconscious, there are typically a number of different attentives. All of these elements need to come together for attending to take place. In the case of smoking, in addition to a cigarette and a lighter, there would also be “a place where smoking is not considered inappropriate behavior”. There are also less obvious attentives that one would not think of unless they are not present at the time and place where attending is to be actualized. Smoking, for example, requires air, as smoking underwater is not possible. If a diver wants to smoke a cigarette, he must surface to actualize the attentive “air”.

In the case of negative motives, the object is chosen to prevent the undesirable from prevailing. An attentive could be “a weapon of defense” in case of imminent danger. It could be “a good excuse” if you don’t want to go to a birthday party to which you have been invited.

An attentive can basically be considered an ingredient in cooking, and like an ingredient, it can be used not just for one recipe, but for different recipes.

The Repetition-Rate

The Repetition-Rate represents the frequency with which a habitual attending is actualized, serving as a measurable indicator of how often a specific behavior or activity is performed. For example, working out might have a Repetition-Rate of once per day, while smoking cigarettes could occur 15 times daily. Similarly, meeting a certain friend may happen around 10 times per month, while attending the opera might be as infrequent as 3 times per year.

Cues

In psychological literature, a distinction is made between various types of cues. They are divided into intrinsic and extrinsic cues, contextual, triggering and predictive cues. The exact definition often depends on which behavior or reaction is considered and in which context it occurs.

Each cue has an encoded predictive power, a “predictiveness”, the degree of reliability to which it correctly points to a goal. This predictive power is the main factor in the likelihood of a goal being actualized if the cue is followed.

According to the ATM, the main function of cues is not to trigger the attender’s goal-directed behavior. They draw attention to a motive and trigger the decision-making process, whereby a decision can be made to follow a cue.

For the description of the MAC, a categorization into predictive and non-predictive cues is sufficient. The focus here is on predictive cues, as the reduction of their power contributes to the dissolution of habitual behavior.

Each cue is encoded with an individual predictivity. This relevance refers to a certain goal like an attending or a motive and acts as a Power-Modulator on the Attending-Actualization-Power.

Predictive cues can not only trigger the decision-making-process when they appear unexpectedly. They are also actively sought to provide clues about the direction and distance to a destination. For example, when we are hungry and don’t know where to find a restaurant in an unfamiliar city, we look for cues such as signs or walk down streets that resemble a street with restaurants in a city we know.

Like road signs that give a driver information about the direction and distance to a particular destination, cues do the same for behavioral goals. The more carefully you follow them, the more likely you are to reach your destination. And if you get lost, you actively look for them to find your way back.

A predictive cue can be linked to several goals. In the case of Motive-Actualization, these can be contradictory. For example, a picture of a candy can be a cue that not only draws attention to the positive motive of “good taste”, but also to the contradictory, negative motive of “weight gain” at the same time.

Predictive extrinsic context cues are the most obvious cues to recognize. But intrinsic cues can also be predictive cues as mental representations of context cues; they are projections from memory and fantasy onto a possible future.

They point in the direction of different destinations. If you are hungry, you might follow the intrinsic cue to a specific dish, e.g. a Chinese one. Then look for intrinsic and extrinsic cues that point to Chinese restaurants.

To achieve Attending-Actualization, the attender follows predictive cues.

 Goals

The ATM speaks of a chain of goals or a chain of cues and goals when it comes to goal-directed behavior. In addition to countless intermediate steps, three main goals are distinguished:

1. Attending-Actualization: The attender’s behavior is aimed at preparing and producing all things and situations that appear necessary for Attending-Actualization.
2. Attending-Actualization: The attender initiates or attempts to initiate and act out the attending when all attentives are actualized.
3. Motive-Actualization: While Attending-Actualization takes place, the degree of Motive-Actualization can vary greatly. It can be between zero and one hundred percent. If it is below one hundred percent, the attender endeavors to raise it to the maximum.

Each of these goals marks the end of one of the three active phases of a MAC. (see also: The Active Phase of a MAC)

Attending-Actualization is the goal of the process to get what we want, while Motive-Actualization is the goal of the outcome to like what we get.

Instead of saying, “The banana is the reward for the monkey and the goal of their behavior is to get the banana,” the ATM would rather say, “Getting the banana is the Attentive-actualization, eating the banana is the Attending-Actualization and enjoying the banana is the Motive-Actualization.”

This distinction is of the utmost importance because it is one of the keys to reversing incentive sensitization. What we think makes us happy and what really makes us happy are often two different things.

The actualization of the motive aims to repeat the good feeling that the initial experience, the first attending produced.

Attending-Actualization, on the other hand, aims to repeat the process that once produced this good feeling. Once the goal of Attending-Actualization has been achieved, this is usually enough to stop the goal-directed behavior – with or without Motive-Actualization occurring.

Processes of the MACs

Abraham Maslow introduced the concept of “prepotency of a need”, meaning that higher needs must be actualized before lower needs become important enough to seek their actualization. Maslow believed that once a need is fulfilled, it becomes less important and the next in the hierarchy of needs becomes prepotent.

There is no direct equivalent of Maslow’s “need-actualization” in the ATM, but the concept of the active and passive phases of the Motive-Actualization-Cycle comes very close to it. Here, needs are differentiated into motives, attendings and attentives according to their composition. On the one hand, a need is a motive, as motives are the mental representations of desires. On the other hand, it is an attending, as the attending represents what the attender believes will fulfill their need. An actualization of an attending can lead to the fulfillment of the need, but it does not have to.

The attendings of active MACs could even be described as prepotent attendings.

Figure 2

The passive Phase, pre-active

In the passive phase of a MAC, the attender is not pursuing goal-actualizations. In the pre-active passive phase, the MAC is maintained and kept ready, like an airplane in the hangar, to come out onto the runway when it is time to take off and enter the active phase.

Cognitive Veto

Not only can people stop themselves from initiating goal-directed behaviors, but they also have the ability to willfully stop and “ban” goal-directed behaviors that have already begun. Becoming aware of potentially negative consequences can lead to a cognitive veto. A cognitive veto can also be generated at will when the attender focuses on the potentially negative consequences of Attending-Actualization. Of course, this also often happens in an unconscious manner.

A cognitive veto is better understood as a process of strengthening the negative motives of an attending through attention-power, rather than as a specific decision being made.

It serves to prevent Attending-Actualization by focusing attention-power on the negative motives that the attending in question is also connected to. To strengthen the veto, the attender can focus their awareness on the negative consequences of the current Attending-Actualization for one thing or the positive consequences of an alternative Attending-Actualization for the other.

In order to evoke a successful veto, the attendee contemplates the various positive and negative motives for influencing the Decision-Making-Process until the direction-making process makes them take a different direction.

Due to a lack of Attending-Actualization-power after a successful veto, the “forbidden” MACs attendings disappears from consciousness, falling into its passive phase.

After the alternative Attending-Actualization is “decided” for, the brain searches for cues that are predictive for the remaining active Attending-Actualizations.

The active Phase of a MAC

After the decision-making-process has decided for an attending, allMACs associated with this attending are activated.

The active phase of a MAC has three sub-phases, each of which has its own goal. The first phase aims for Attending-Actualization, the second for Attending-Actualization and the third for Motive-Actualization.

Attentives-Actualization

In the 1st part of the active phase of a MAC, the goal is attentives-actualization.

For an Attending-Actualization “skydiving”, for example, the attender would strive to actualize the attentives “parachute”, “airplane”, “parachute training” and “sufficient drop height” among others.

Attending-Actualization

Part 2 of the active phase contains the goal of “Attending-Actualization”. A successful “attentives-actualization” has set the table for the “attending” to be actualized. However, whether the attending is actually actualized still depends on the context.

On the one hand, there could be a cognitive veto. On the other hand, the context can hinder the actualization of the attending.

In such a case, the attender typically strives to adapt the context or the attentives in order to actualize the attending after all.

If this is not possible or too much effort, the attender returns to the Direction-Finding-Process to find and start a new chain of goals for Attending-Actualization.

They can also choose to actualize another attending, which can serve the same Motive-Actualization.

Motive-Actualization

The 3rd active phase has the goal of Motive-Actualization. Motive-Actualization is either the repetition or avoidance of the experience that was originally for the positive as well as negative motive. As mentioned before, Motive-Actualization is the end goal of the outcome. (Whereas the end goal of the process of a goal-directed behavior is Attending-Actualization).

This goal actualization is not directly subjected to the goal-directed behavior.  The motive can only be actualized indirectly via Attending-Actualization.

Its actualization is also not a question of yes or no. It is actualized to a certain degree, which can vary from zero to 100 percent. 

The Motive-Actualization marks the end of the active phase of the MAC.

This may be the case for various reasons:

• A cognitive veto is successful.
• The cost proves to be too high.
• One or more of the attentives are used up.
• Enough Motive-Actualization has taken place so that the Attending-Actualization-power has diminished with the decreasing power of some power-modulators.
• The Attending-Actualization-Power has decreased for other reasons.

In this case, the cycle is complete and begins anew with the distant future of the post-active phase.

Passive phase, post-active

In the post-active passive phase, valence-coding changes the synaptic connections of the corresponding mental representations, goals and cues. The MAC just experienced is “played backwards” like a slide show by the brain searching for patterns: “What happened before the motive was actualized, what happened before that, and what happened before that?”

Relevant information collected about the connections between events is (re)encoded Motive-Power and Cue-Power.

After the moment of experiencing an experience, the brain sees it as a distant future, as the MAC has just entered its passive phase.

Multiple MACs

There are countless different MACs, practically one for every motive. As there are two motives for every experience an attender has had in their life there are a lot of MACs.

At the same time, however, only a few of them are in their active phase. The way the brain deals with MACs is comparable to the way we deal with completing various tasks. In part, it is even the same.

As consciousness only ever stays with one object of perception at a time, it is constantly jumping around when multitasking. The more attendings are experienced simultaneously, the less attending-power flows into each individual Attending-Actualization. As a result, the degree of Motive-Actualization will not be as high for any one motive as it would be if it were actualized exclusively. For example, if you are simultaneously watching a profound movie on TV, eating ice cream, taking a foot bath, talking to your partner about your relationship, playing with your pet cat and thinking about why you sometimes have trouble falling asleep, you will certainly not understand everything that happens in the movie.

Nevertheless, several MACs can merge into individual ones. Eating ice cream and taking a foot bath while watching TV could develop into a habitual MAC for someone. In this example, the comforting feeling could be the motive of the three MACs merged into one MAC.

Figure 3 shows multiple MACs. One in its active phase, the other in its passive phase. An unlimited number of MACs can be active or passive at the same time.

Power Structure of a MAC

The power structure of a habitual MAC, the basic form of a MAC, is shown here. The power structures of other MACs are covered in later chapters.

Figure 4

The Motive-Power of the MAC, together with the Motive-Powers of other MACs, contributes to the Attending-Power.

It then flows into the Attending-Actualization-Power as the main power. This can be amplified by Cue-Power and influenced by various Power-Modulators.

All MACs that share this attending enter their active phase, provided this is not prevented by a cognitive veto.

Finally, while Attending-Actualization is taking place, the power of the MAC’s motive is recoded according to the degree of its actualization.

Of course, the same applies to all active MACs that are connected to the same attending. Each motive is given an individually different degree of Motive-Actualization.

The Cue-Power of all cues for each goal in the chain of goals is recoded from the time the goals are actualized.

Motivational Powers

Motivation is commonly referred to as extrinsic (due to external factors such as rewards or social recognition) or intrinsic (due to internal factors such as personal interests or enjoyment).

The ATM does not make this distinction. According to this theory at hand, extrinsic motivational factors always relate back to the attender’s inner self.

The strength of motivation of a goal-directed behavior largely corresponds to the Attending-Actualization-power.  The fundamental factor of this power is Motive-Power.

Various models, such as the Affective Tagging Model by the Dutch psychologist Nico Frijda, consider each power to be encoded with a valence of between >0 and 1.

The ATM follows their example of mathematically demonstrating the effects of motivational powers or valence coding.

Motive-Power

The origin of all motivational power of a MAC is Motive-Power. Each motive is encoded with the degree of importance of the experience that was the source of the motive. Motive-Power reflects the subjective importance of a Motive-Actualization for the attender. It is the strength of the predicted positive or negative consequence. Conscious and unconscious valences are equally the sources of this power. (see: Motive-Power-Coding).

Actual-Motive-Power

This power corresponds to the degree of actualization of the motive. It is an essential factor for recoding Motive-Power.

As Motive-Power represents the level of “liking” or “disliking” of an attending experienced in the past, Actual-Motive-Power is the degree of “liking” or “disliking” the attender experiences with Motive-Actualizations.

Attending-Power

Attending-Power is the overall importance of an attending. The strength of an Attending-Power results from the sum of the Motive-Powers associated with the attending and the strength of the connections. (see: valence-coding)

A single motive can project power onto multiple attendings, just as multiple motives can project power onto individual attendings.

Attending-Actualization-Power

The Attending-Actualization-Power is primarily fed from the Attending-Power. Terms like “drive” or “motivation” may be used in other contexts for this power. The various Power-Modulators and cues also have an influence on its strength.

The hierarchy of attendings and their pre- and post-potency results from this power.

Power-Modulators

Attending-Actualization-powers can be amplified or attenuated by a variety of Power-Modulators. This can happen indirectly through their influence on the Motive-Power as well as by affecting the Attending-Actualization-power directly.

This chapter will briefly outline some of them as there may be countless more like stress, peer influence or vulnerability to name a few.

Cue-Power as a Power-Modulator

In the Attending Theory of Motivation (ATM), Cue-Power functions as a crucial power-modulator that dynamically influences the strength and direction of an individual’s motivation toward specific behaviors. Cue-Power is defined as the predictive strength of a cue in signaling the likelihood of achieving a desired attending or goal. Acting as a power-modulator, Cue-Power adjusts the Attending-Actualization-power by either amplifying or attenuating the motivational forces that drive goal-directed behavior. For instance, a high Cue-Power associated with a particular stimulus intensifies the Attending-Actualization-power, thereby increasing the likelihood that the individual will pursue the corresponding behavior. Conversely, a low Cue-Power diminishes this motivational pull, making the behavior less likely to be actualized.

Furthermore, Cue-Power interacts synergistically with other Power-Modulators, such as identity, commitment, and rhythm-modulation, to fine-tune the individual’s behavioral responses in various contexts. Through processes of encoding and recoding, the brain continuously updates Cue-Powers based on past experiences and current environmental stimuli, ensuring that motivational forces remain aligned with the individual’s evolving goals and situational demands. This dynamic regulation allows individuals to adapt their behavior effectively, responding to both internal states and external cues with appropriate motivational intensity.

By modulating Attending-Actualization-power, Cue-Power plays an integral role in the decision-making and direction-finding processes of ATM, guiding individuals toward behaviors that maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative consequences. Consequently, understanding and manipulating Cue-Powers can be a powerful tool in strategies aimed at dissolving maladaptive habits and addictions, as it directly impacts the motivational landscape that governs habitual behaviors.

Identity

Personal identity seems to act like a gravitational force between the attender and the attending. Since the brain is an interface between the self-image and the outside world, any reference to self-related mental representations is given an extra dose of attention.

Identity and role behavior appear to be genetically inherent in species with pronounced social networks, also outside of humans. In his 1994 study ‘Investigation of Social Hierarchy in Rats Through Water Immersion Experiments,’ Didier Desor explored social hierarchies in rats under stress-inducing conditions, such as forced water immersion.” Desor placed six laboratory rats in a glass box with a tunnel staircase leading to an opening at the bottom of a tank half-filled with water. A feeder was attached to the wall of the tank, forcing the rats to swim and dive for the food. Desor observed that the rats formed a clear hierarchy in this situation:

Three “worker” rats constantly swam for the food. Two rats became “exploiters” and snatched the food from the workers instead of swimming themselves. The sixth rat became independent, diving for food alone and neither sharing nor having to share with the other rats.

In his follow-up experiments, Didier Desor investigated the adaptability of rats’ social roles when their group composition changes. When grouping rats with the same original roles (exploiters, workers or independents), Desor observed that the rats quickly adapted their behavior and reorganized their hierarchy.

When Desor placed six “exploiters” in a group, these rats were forced to adapt their behavior as they could no longer rely on the “workers” for food. Interestingly, the exploiters quickly re-established a hierarchy, with two of them becoming “workers” and swimming for food, one rat taking the “independent” role and the remaining three continuing as exploiters.

The same picture emerged when six “workers” were put together as well as with six “independent” rats. The same social structure was established again and again.

Although the original publication could not be obtained, Desor’s experiment has been cited in multiple analyses of social behavior in animals, highlighting its significance in this field.

It cannot be overlooked how strongly people’s motivated behavior is influenced by their self-perceived identity. If you look at fans who identify with a particular sports club, for example, it becomes clear what energy identity can unleash. Or somebody finding unexpectedly out about fatherhood often is a life changing factor because the man suddenly identifies as a father.

Identity is to the mind what a home is to the body. It feels safe there, is reluctant to leave it without good reason and tends to return there always and again for the rest of its life.

Smokers are a good example of this. If a smoker approaches another smoker, holds a pack of cigarettes underTheir nose and asks: “Do you smoke?”, the smoker will most certainly take one. Even if they don’t feel the need to smoke.

For the subconscious, every change in a habit is a cause for fear. Fear of losing the familiar as well as fear of getting or becoming the unknown.

Like an antagonist, the subconscious tends to underpin the attender’s decisiveness when it wants to make identity changes.

Reward Discounting

Every behavior is based on a cost-benefit equation. The closer the reward, the lower the costs. Spatial and temporal proximity reinforce the resulting “wanting”, the Attending-Actualization-Power.(Kurzban et al., 2013)

For the brain, spatial and temporal proximity are not different. The sum of the number and size of the intervening attendings is the measure of proximity.(Walsh, 2018)

Marc Lewis calls this phenomenon “now appeal” in The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease. (2016, Scribe Publications)

Other sources refer to it as “resource efficiency”. In this text, the term “reward discounting” is chosen and used in the sense of George Ainslie. His theory of reward discounting differs from earlier theories in several respects.

Ainslie’s theory is known as “hyperbolic discounting theory” and is based on the idea that people discount future rewards more than traditional exponential discounting theories predict.(Ainslie, 2001)

Reward discounting is often responsible for making decisions that turn out to be bad in the long run. Favoring immediate rewards over long-term returns and discounting future benefits may sometimes seem puzzling. “Why do people smoke even though they know it will kill them?” The short answer is they don’t know. At least their subconscious doesn’t know.

Discounting rewards in daily life is often seen as a kind of weakness of the human mind. Grasping for instant gratification is a counter to delayed gratification, which is arguably one of the most important factors for success in life.

Nevertheless, the ATM considers reward discounting to be a fundamentally healthy trait. From an evolutionary perspective, various factors could have played a decisive role in the development of reward discounting as a characteristic of human personality.

The fact that the formerly reasonable characteristic of reward discounting is now considered unreasonable by modern people and has turned into something negative is primarily due to the serious change that the factor of future uncertainty has undergone.

The likelihood of dying young or unexpectedly has fallen dramatically. It may sound a little cynical, but the problem of the long-term effects of addictions, for example, is a consequence of increased life expectancy. Ten thousand years ago, people did not die of cirrhosis of the liver due to alcohol abuse. Back then, this disease could not even reach an advanced stage because life expectancy was so low that people would usually have died before then.

If you were to give a modern person aged twenty the choice of either a) having an abundance of exquisite food for three years from now, or b) a lifetime of food, but only from the age of 40, he would surely choose b). Ten thousand years ago, however,Their choice would probably have been the exact opposite.

Only our rational mind in the form of conscious thinking “knows” about the newly acquired high life expectancy. Our feelings and emotions are not yet evolutionarily adapted, so that “wrong” decisions are not a shortcoming, but something completely natural.

Attending Discounting

The more limited the availability of a resource, the more valuable it is. This applies not only to all forms of business, but also to the basic valuation by our brain. We value rare things more than what appears to be in abundance. It is not important to keep something if it is always there and available. New or rare things are interesting and at least of potential importance. Of course, the resources of necessities become especially valuable when they are limited.

This also applies to attendings. As each new experience is the only one of its kind up to this point, it has a certain significance. Attending a new MAC initially has the added value of a limited resource. The phenomenon of curiosity takes this into account.

If, over time, the attender has managed to make all attentives readily available and to have Attending-Actualization more or less at will, attending discounting sets in. The greater the abundance of resources – the easier it is to actualize an attending, the less value is assigned.

For example, in a camp near a lake in the rainforest, attending “drinking a cup of water” naturally has less Attending-Actualization-Power than hiking through the desert.

Homeostasis and Baselines

Obviously, simple bodily, emotional and rational states are waxing and waning factors of Attending-Actualization-Power.

When you’re hungry, food seems more tempting and delicious – when you’ve been around the nicest people all day, you might want to be alone for a while – when you’ve been disciplined and worked hard for 20 days in a row, you’re happy to have a day off like you might be on vacation.

Less obviously, the homeostasis of an attender’s dopamine baseline often proves to be a crucial factor in addictive behaviors.(Berridge, 2009) (Wise, 2004)

Dr. Anna Lembke is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.  According to her, the brain’s reward system is constantly adapting to maintain homeostasis, and this adaptation can lead to changes in baseline dopamine levels. For example, repeated exposure to highly rewarding stimuli can lead to a decrease of the dopamine baseline, which in turn can contribute to the development of tolerance. She emphasizes the dynamic nature of the dopamine baseline. (Lembke, 2021)

Commitment-Modulation

Not only do we look in the direction we are going, but we also tend to go in the direction we are looking. Once we have decided to carry out a certain task, we are “determined” to continue this path.

We may have gone into the kitchen to do something – but what was it? Standing there, we seem to need to know! We want to finish this task, no matter what it was. Even though it can’t possibly be that important, we have a feeling that it must have been.

The power-modulator “commitment” refers to the motivational power that drives individuals to maintain consistency between their thoughts, beliefs, and actions. (Cialdini et al., 1995)

This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the Zeigarnik effect or cognitive dissonance. The term “cognitive dissonance” was first introduced by psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957. His groundbreaking work is based on the observation of a doomsday cult that continued to believe in its prophecies even after they had failed, which led to insights into how people deal with contradictory findings.

(Bluma Zeigarnik, 1927) (Festinger, 1957)

This innate human tendency towards commitment can strengthen an Attending-Actualization-power to such an extent that the connected MACs cannot easily switch from their active to their passive phases.

If a passive MACs Attending-Actualization-power grows to such an extent that it exceeds the strength of the currently pursued attendings, it is the commitment-power that keeps the attender on track. It prevents us from constantly changing our alignment, it prevents us from jumping back and forth between different goal-directed behaviors.

Rhythm-Modulation

The power of rhythmic repetition is obvious in nature. Almost all animals follow circadian rhythms.

Humans are rhythmic animals, probably the most rhythmic of all. The heartbeat, breathing, walking, talking, running, singing and dancing are perhaps the most obvious examples of this. Good timing provides the body-mind-complex with the optimal preparation for the routine of complex behavior or even a simple muscle contraction.

If you get up at the same time every day, you no longer need an alarm clock, and if you always eat at a certain time, you’ll get your appetite on time.

Even medicine makes use of the circadian rhythm with so-called chrono pharmacology. We organize our lives and routines in different rhythms. Daily, weekly and monthly tasks are the most common.

Moreover, attendings of all kinds seem to strive for rhythmic actualization. Anchoring them in our artificial schedules such as calendars is a question of practicality.

It is in the nature of things to facilitate reunions with friends by scheduling them for every Monday of the month, for example. Other habits can have a Repetition-Rate of three to five times a year and are not tied to specific times or dates. Their rhythm may have resulted from various homeostatic factors and necessities in the attender’s life circumstances.

Once a habit is established, its Attending-Actualization-Power is rhythmically strengthened.

Attention-Modulation and Free Will

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies the power to choose. In that choice lies your growth and freedom.” (Viktor E. Frankl, 2006)

Concentration, focus and mindfulness make up attention-power. This power is of such importance for the Attending Theory of Motivation that it could also be called the Attention Theory of Motivation.

It is no secret that focusing attention on a goal increases the likelihood of achieving that goal. Attenders can direct their attention to a specific motive or attending and thus influence the decision-making process.

According to the ATM, this is how free will flows into an attender’s decision.

As magnifying effect, the attention that the attender invests by focusing on any element of a MAC will increase its power.

Conversely, goals and cues lose power when the attention-power of the attender is taken up by other cues or attendings. This can be seen, for example, when stillness meditation leads to a reduction in symptoms of ADHD, as suggested by long-term studies.(Galante et al., 2018; Musso et al., 2016; Zylowska et al., 2008)

Valence Coding

How the brain recognizes and processes positive or negative experiences is generally referred to as valence coding. It is a value system that determines how and how strongly our body-mind-complex should react to certain things in our environment.

A MAC is a revaluation mechanism in the form of a feedback loop. The feedback of the degree of Motive-Actualization (the strength of “liking” or “disliking”) (re)evaluates the different Motive-Powers of all MACs that share the related attending. This evaluation takes place during the experience and afterwards.

During retrospective processing, the MAC is mentally repeated or even “played backwards” by the brain. Each goal-actualization causes a re-evaluation of the Motive-Power associated with it.

Two of the motivational powers are directly encoded, decoded and recoded:

1)         Motive-Power: The (re-)coding of Motive-Power is caused by experiences.

2.)        Predictive power: The predictive power of a cue is recoded each time it is followed.

The other motivational powers are a product of these two powers and the various Power-Modulators.

Figure 5

Since the ATM was born out of the need for an approach to scientifically explain how addictions can be dissolved, this chapter will attempt to provide a mathematical illustration of how Motive-Power and Cue-Power of strong habits can be reduced and even dissolved.

At this point, we can only speculate about the exact interplay of the various factors involved. Empirical data must be collected in order to formulate solid hypotheses about the nature of this factor.

To illustrate how decreasing of motive- and predictive-power can work, the ATM proposes the use of the weighted average, a mathematical concept in which an average value is calculated by assigning different importance or “weights” to individual data points.

The Encoding of Motive-Powers

In motive formation, Motive-Power is encoded with the subjective value of the original experience. This value has two factors, namely strength and direction.

The Motive-Power is encoded in relation to the degree of importance of the experience. This is the level of predicted liking and disliking, the degree of how strong the attender perceived the attending as physically beneficial, emotionally good and rationally as right.

Two motives are encoded for each experience with the strength of this experience-power; one of which is negative and the other positive (see also: Motives)

This gives the positive motive a valence of 0 for 0 percent importance and a valence of 1 for 100 percent importance.

Accordingly, the negative motive has a valence of 0 for 0 percent importance and a valence of -1 for 100 percent importance.

An almost life-saving experience would generate a power of approximately +1 for the positive motive. The valence of the negative motive for the same experience would depend on the strength of the negative consequences of the same experience.

Conversely, an almost life-destroying experience would generate a power of approximately -1 for the negative motive, while its positive would be characterized by the strength of the positive consequences.

Neutral experiences would not generate Motive-Power as they would not even be remembered as new experiences.

The Recoding of Motive-Power

While Motive-Power formation essentially corresponds to the liking or disliking of the original experience, the valence recoding of the Motive-Power takes place each time the motive is actualized. (see Figure 4)

The ATM proposes a mathematical approximation of how Motive-Power could be changed by Motive-Actualization. (see Motive-Power-Equation in the appendix)

Encoding and Recoding of Cue-Powers

The predictive power of cues is encoded in valence after a significant experience has been made. The brain strengthens the neuronal connections of memories that arose with the experience in a temporal or meaningful context.

All events that preceded the new experience are potentially remembered as cues. These mental representations are linked to the experience as such. The strength of this connection becomes the Cue-Power.

Every time a cue is followed by the attender for goal-actualization the Cue-Power get recoded no matter if one or more goals will be actualized. Even if no goal is actualized its predictiveness will get recoded. All it takes to recode Cue-Power is that the attender follows the predictive cue.

Figure 6

The special ATM

The “special ATM” builds on the “general ATM” and expands it by one level. On this level, the level of human behavior, goal-directed-behavior can have the goal of changing itself.

It is therefore about the special case in which the motivation of an individual’s behavior is to change the behavior of the individual itself in a certain direction, in accordance with their own reason. Here, the behavior becomes an object to itself – a specialty of our species.

Among other things (see also: Effects of a Pruning-MAC), the special ATM aims to provide a scientific explanation for reversing the process of incentive desensitization. It proposes a way of “incentive desensitization” to not only cope with “bad” habits and addictions through abstinence, but to actually dissolve them.

To achieve dishabitization, the attender must (re)gain conscious cognitive control over the decision-making process. The term “conscious” and not “cognitive” is the most important key to gaining control. Every attending must be preceded by a conscious decision.

A second important factor in addition to the conscious decision is the postponement of the next attending. The attender inserts at least one event between decision and attending. (See: withdraw-attending) Each time “the wanting” to perform an addictive behavior arises, the attender does not decide “yes” (uncontrolled behavior) or “no” (abstinent behavior) but creates a mental image of the transition from withdraw attending to the next attending. This “Outdraw-Cue” can be a specific point in time, an unrelated event, certain circumstances or simply the completion of a task before the next Attending. The length of the deferral can be anything and be from moments, minutes or hours to days, months or even years.

This approach can be seen as a form of systematically delayed gratification. The attender usually starts by delaying an attending just a little. Over time, it can increase the delay time and thus reduce the Repetition-Rate of its habitual behavior.

This process replaces automatisms and habitual reactions with conscious decisions. The more consistently this approach is pursued, the more reliably the Cue-Power decreases. In addition, the Motive-Power for habitual behavior decreases, as “wanting” and “liking” (re) synchronize a little further with each Motive-Actualization.

This approach differs from abstinence approaches primarily in that it considers occasional Attending-Actualizations to be not only acceptable but even necessary. Only by Motive-Actualizations can cue- and Motive-Power be dissolved and thus habits and addictions be dishabitized.

Homo Sapiens, the special Animal

Various characteristics make us a special animal that is different from all others. One of the domains in which this is particularly evident is the formation and breaking of habits.

Only we can reject the status quo that constitutes our learned behavior and change it to what we ourselves consider to be better. The ability to make cognitive decisions consciously and deliberately enables people to consciously change habitual behavior.

People value meaning: subjectively perceived meaningfulness, even if it may often be irrational, is a motivational power that can override all others in certain contexts. It is rated as important not only by the conscious mind, but also by the subconscious. Meaningfulness releases dopamine and thus causes attention-power.

People strive for happiness: “If only, if only – then I would be happy”. But whenever we get what we think will make us happy, happiness doesn’t last long.

Human beings are aware of the fact that they must die one day. This awareness of mortality plays a role in the subjective definition of “good” and “bad”, “right” and “wrong”. Thinking about mortality can trigger fear or create wisdom in a person who recognizes that everything the mind can grasp is ultimately transient. Equally, the awareness of being mortal can lead to great foolishness. It can fuel the fear of insignificance which, in denial of this fact, can lead us to ridiculous actions such as achieving fame.

Other animals do not usually become addicted, as the motto of the Nobel Conference 51 on addiction expresses: “Addiction – a uniquely human condition”(Gustavus Adolphus College, n.d.)

Other examples of this uniqueness are identification with a self and with social roles, the tendency to create self-fulfilling prophecies, the fear of fear or the desire for desire.

The special ATM is an attempt to understand and describe human behavior motivated by the desire to change oneself through cognitive control.

The special Decision-Making-Process (How Humans decide)

One of the defining traits of humanity is the ability to make conscious, rational decisions. Unlike other animals, whose actions are primarily guided by instinct and learned behavior, humans have the unique capacity to reflect, analyze, and project outcomes. This enables deliberate, goal-directed choices that transcend immediate impulses.

Two Pathways to Decisions

Decisions arise through two distinct pathways:

1. Conscious and Reflective Decision-Making:

This involves deliberate thought, weighing options, and considering long-term consequences. It is a hallmark of human cognition, grounded in the ability to use language, imagine possible futures, and align actions with abstract goals.

• Unconscious Evaluative Decision-Making:

These decisions stem from the body-mind complex’s automatic processes. Operating largely beneath conscious awareness, this pathway integrates instincts, emotions, and past experiences to produce rapid evaluations. It is a shared mechanism across the animal kingdom, ensuring survival through swift, often intuitive responses to the environment.

The Dual Process in Action

The Attending Theory of Motivation describes decision-making as the interplay of these two pathways, where conscious reflection and unconscious evaluations converge.

The Role of Attention-Power:

Conscious decisions rely on the ability to focus attention deliberately. This attention-power sharpens the attender’s ability to evaluate options and strengthens the commitment to act in alignment with their goals.

1. Unconscious Contributions:

At the same time, unconscious processes influence the decision-making process, offering insights drawn from emotional and bodily states, habitual patterns, and prior experiences. These inputs can harmonize with or challenge conscious intentions, creating a dynamic tension that shapes the final decision.

Attending-Actualization-Power as a Synergistic Force

At the center of the Decision-Making-Process is Attending-Actualization-power—the attender’s capacity to actualize intentions into actions. This power emerges not solely from conscious focus but from the synergy of willpower and unconscious support. When attention is directed toward a goal, it creates momentum, but the actualization of that goal depends on unconscious patterns aligning with conscious intent.

It is this interplay—not conscious control alone—that drives successful decisions. While a strong focus enhances Attending-Actualization-power, the attender must also acknowledge and work with the influence of their subconscious to fully align their behavior with desired outcomes. (also see: The Triune-Control Hypothesis)

The Special Attending Theory of Motivation posits that effective decision-making involves a dynamic interplay between these two processes in human beings. Conscious and unconscious elements combine to determine actions, with each influencing the other to varying degrees depending on the context.

When the attender channels their attention onto what they deem to be the “best choice,” they reinforce the Attending-Actualization-power, increasing the likelihood of delaying the executing the unwanted behavior.

Dishabitizing a habit like smoking requires aligning conscious attention-power with a reconditioning of unconscious patterns. The stronger the focus on the Outdraw-Cue, the more Attending-Actualization-powers are influenced.

While willpower is often seen as a finite resource, the Attending Theory of Motivation reframes it as a skill—one that grows stronger with intentional practice. By repeatedly directing attention to align with desired goals, the attender builds both focus and the ability to actualize their decisions effectively.

The chapter concludes by emphasizing the empowerment that comes from understanding and mastering this process. With practice, individuals can leverage both conscious and unconscious decision-making to create meaningful changes in their lives, aligning actions with values and long-term aspirations.

The Corrupted-Attending

The root of bad habit and addiction is typically a “Corrupted-Attending”. An attending becomes corrupted when a new motive develops from its repeated actualization.

For example, in habitual alcohol use, a new negative motive may be withdrawal, while the original motive was socialization.

Because both motives have the same attending as a cue for their actualization. Thus, these two different goal-directed behaviors are easily mistaken as one, namely “this person’s drinking behavior”.

However, these are two different MACs with two different motives. The original, positive motive is to feel good. The new, negative motive is not to feel bad.

Once the negative motive is established, it reinforces the behavior. This happens even if the original, positive motive is no longer actualized.

Experiencing withdrawal and carvings leads to new, negative motives aimed at avoiding these feelings. A new MAC is created with each new motive.

Such a MAC with a corrupted, negative motive can become more potent than the original from which it was created.

The liking of the effect decreases, while the desire to dissolve feelings of withdrawal increases.

After habituation and building up tolerance, the attender may no longer be “rewarded” with good feelings from drinking. However, the desire for these good feelings becomes stronger with each failed attempt to feel good. Along with the feelings of withdrawal, the “craving” to get intoxicated becomes stronger and stronger.

The attender gets into a vicious circle as the new motives have to be actualized by the original attending, the “drinking of alcohol”.

However, several new corrupted motives can also form. They can be both negative and positive. In the case of alcohol consumption, the original motive may have been “socialization”, which may have led to the regular Attending-Actualization “drinking”. Over time, both the negative motives “withdrawal”, “shame of being a drinker” and “loneliness” and the positive motives “forgetting everyday worries”, “feeling at home in the local pub” and “getting support from relatives” may also have developed as new motives. These new motives share the same attending, the Corrupted-Attending.

The Abstained-Attending, “Abstinence”

What is recognized as “bad”, “wrong” or “harmful” behavior is either controlled or stopped altogether. To avoid negative consequences, a MAC can be stopped by a rational veto while it is still in the passive phase of the decision-making process. Of course, this is also possible during the active phase, although this usually requires the activation of another contradictory MAC. (see also: Cognitive Veto)

Figure 7

Especially, when it comes to addictions, the difficulty with abstinence is not achieving it, but maintaining it. The subject of “relapse” hangs like a sword of Damocles over the so-called addict’s head for the rest of their life. Relapse is the real problem!

The ATM distinguishes between absolute and intermittent abstinence. Absolute abstinence is the classic form of abstinence. With entering and maintaining absolute abstinence, an addiction is not dissolved. The Motive-Power and Cue-Power are not necessarily reduced, and the “wanting” is still strong.

Habits and addictions are not dissolved by abstinence because in an abstained-attending, no Attending-Actualization, which would be necessary for the recoding of Motive-Power, can occur. Thus, the reduction in Motive-Power remains subject to the Power-Modulators and in most cases is not or only superficially dissolved.

Also, predictive powers of cues cannot decrease if the attender abstains from a particular attending. This is basically for the same reasons as the non-dissolution of Motive-Power. The re-evaluation process of Cue-Power only starts if a cue has been followed.

Intermittent abstinence on the other hand can dissolve habits and addictions. With intrinsic motivation, intermittent abstinence can lead to absolute abstinence more or less as a matter of course. Single “lapses”, “slips” or “attendings” are the exception to the rule. They do not lead to a relapse.

Absolute abstinence without risk of relapse can still be achieved after the Motive-Power has been reduced and the Cue-Power has decreased to the point where the cue-reactivity is well dissolved. The “liking” and “wanting” are synchronized again at this point by the intermittent abstinence controlled by the Pruning-MAC.

To eliminate the risk of relapse, the attender must stop being addicted before they stop the addictive behavior.

The Coping-MAC

In the ATM terminology, the desire to control a behavioral pattern represented by the “coping motive”. This is the desire to avoid the negative consequences of recurring behavior. This is usually a “bad” habit, a habitual MAC resulting from a “Corrupted-Attending”.

Which is recognized as repeated “wrong” behavior, a “bad” habit or addiction is targeted by the attender. The Corrupted-Attending of the habitual MAC becomes the target-attending for the Coping-MAC.

The attender typically tries to reduce the repetition-rate of this attending to control the habit. They either simply use cognitive vetoes or they set up a rule of behavior. Such rules can be “Only smoke after dark.” or “Only get drunk at home.”

The Pruning-MAC

A Pruning-MAC is a refined and more conscious form of the Coping-MAC. It can step in when a Coping-MAC fails and cognitive vetoes and rules are no longer able to control a habit. In this case, the Coping-MAC can serve as the basis for establishing a Pruning-MAC.

In neuroscience, “pruning” refers to the process of eliminating weak or unused synapses in the brain. Pruning is the brain’s way of refining its neural network by eliminating the rarely used synapses and strengthening the frequently used ones.

The interplay of learning and pruning allows the brain to adapt to new experiences while maintaining its performance. (Zeng, 2020)

The pruning motive is basically a coping motive and could perhaps be described as the desire to lose a desire or a fear.

An attender can create a “Pruning-MAC” and use it as a mental tool. It can be understood as a brain app, so to speak, or simply as a blueprint for the corresponding behavioral rules. 

A gardener who is not familiar with pruning, fertilizing and weeding may have to watch helplessly as their plant becomes overgrown and dies. But gardening can be learned so that the plant grows and thrives. The same applies to developing and maintaining a Coping-MAC so that the habit can wither and dissolve.

“Just say No” for example is a coping-MAC, however not a Pruning-MAC. A Pruning-MAC must include a positive element. Attention-power cannot be directed to nothingness.

Instead of saying No to attendings, the attender wants to say Yes to abstinence. However, “abstinence” is a concept engulfing nothingness, the absence of attendings.

A coping-MAC includes a rule that can be followed. This rule includes the positive element that the mind can grasp. Instead of saying “I will not do this”,  a rule leads to saying “I will do this not now but later”

The Pruning-MAC aims to reduce the Motive-Power and Cue-Power of a Target-MAC. When this power decreases, bad habits, including addictions, dissolve and eventually disappear.

The Repetition-Ideal

The attentive “Repetition-Ideal” is a mental representation of a behavioral rule. This is the ideal of the Repetition-Rate defined by the attender themself. The Repetition-Ideal is the ideal that is strived for as the next stage. It can later be replaced by a new one.

For the first Repetition-Ideal(s), the attender weighs up how much withdrawal they can resist.  The current Repetition-Ideal must be realistically achievable.

For the last Repetition-Ideal, the attender weighs up what ratio of positive to negative effects they consider to be a good measure for the next phase of their life.  (also see: Defining the Repetition-Ideal by the attender)

Withdraw-MAC and Outdraw-Cue

A Withdraw-MAC postpones the target-Attending-Actualization. This interim period is the phase in which the attender is subject to a temporary withdrawal. Hence the name Withdraw MAC.

Within a Pruning-MAC, the Withdraw-MAC generates a reduction in the repetition-rate as delayed gratification. The aim of the attender is to actualize the current Repetition-Ideal.

To do so, it creates a concrete idea of the end or result of the withdraw MAC. This mental representation thus becomes the Outdraw-Cue. (see also: Mental Imaging as a Tool)

The specific time and place to continue with the target-Attending-Actualization is therefore signaled by the Outdraw-Cue. It retriggers the Target-MAC when it is recognized as a cue by the attender at the end of the withdraw MAC.

Due to the renewed attention-power and the lifting of the veto, the goal-directed-behavior to actualize the target-attending in accordance with the Repetition-Ideal can proceed.

Processes of a Pruning-MAC

A Pruning-MAC figuratively kidnaps the attending of the Target-MAC.  From now on, both MACs share goals and cues, at least partially. The Pruning-MAC acts like a bracket around the withdraw and Target-MACs.

Figure 8

The activation of a Pruning-MAC is triggered by the activation of the Target-MAC. Now the Decision-Making-Process must determine when the common attending should be actualized. This is where the conscious cognitive mind of the attender becomes dominant. The rational mind estimates what is a good time and place for the next Attending-Actualization.  That time is determined by the completion of the connected withdraw-MAC. (see also decision options of the Pruning-MAC)

As described in more detail later, this comes close to both the concept of exposure therapy and that of delayed gratification.

After executing the withdraw MACs, the Outdraw-Cue triggers the lifting of the inhibition and the target attending can be actualized.

If triggering cues of the Corrupted-Attendings appear in the meantime, they are immediately “redirected” to the Outdraw-Cue.

Impacts of a Pruning-MAC

Habits are made up of many elements. Unfortunately, they – and addictions in particular are not to be broken like chains, which snap when their weakest link breaks. However, neither are they as bad as a weed, which can only be successfully combated by pulling out all of its many-branched roots.

Bad habits are more like houseplants whose growth has gotten completely out of control. It is necessary to prune them thoroughly once and then keep them in check, but once this is done, they are no work at all. If the gardener remains vigilant from then on, they will not cause any more trouble.

A carefully created Pruning-MAC can dissolve any habitual behavior. If the attender follows its self-imposed rules consistently, except for a limited number of exceptions, various things will happen, which will be described in more detail below.

Decrease of Cue-Power (of a Target-MAC)

Cue-reactivity, a well-recognized phenomenon, is a primary cause of relapse. It clearly reveals how Cue-Powers can persist for a long time, even without triggering any behavior. While they lie dormant and unnoticed, abstinence does not dissolve the predictive power of cues.

With abstinence, the Cue-Powers fall asleep, so to speak. Because there is an ever-increasing time gap between the present and the last habitual attending, power-modulators change, which can lead to the fading of what is often referred to as triggering-power of a cue.

However, this is caused only by a temporary decrease in the Attending-Actualization-power. The predictive power of the cue remains unaffected by absolute abstinence.

This is different with the intermittent abstinence that a Pruning-MAC produces. Here all target-cues get decoupled from the target-attending. Whenever a target-cue appears, the path to target-Attending-Actualization is now via the activation of the Pruning-MAC and the decision process.

When the target-attending is finally actualized after the end of the withdraw MAC, the Cue-Power of the target-attending decreases.

This is because the cues were followed but did not lead to direct success as the target-attending was not directly actualized.

The more withdraw-attendings are inserted into the Target-MAC, the greater the decrease of Cue-Power. If the attender repeats this procedure, the target-cues will predict increasingly unreliable Attending-Actualizations and thus lose their predictive power. With enough completions of the Pruning-MAC, all Cue-Powers of the Target-MAC can dissolve completely.

(also see: (Recoding of Cue-Powers)

Decrease of Motive-Power (of the negative Motive of the Target-MAC)

A Pruning-MAC can reduce and dissolve cravings and symptoms of withdrawal. Over the course of numerous attendings the ability to resist increases through a combination of psychological mechanisms.

The process corresponds roughly to the principle of anxiety reduction in exposure therapy.

Exposure therapy is a form of behavioral therapy used to treat anxiety disorders, including phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The therapy is based on the principle of habituation. According to this principle, repeated exposure to a feared stimulus or situation causes a reduction in the fear response over time.

The Pruning-MAC also utilizes the habituation principle as the main factor in dissolving the negative Motive-Power of the Target-MAC. However, instead of reducing anxiety, the Pruning-MACs insertion of the Withdraw-MAC reduces feelings of withdrawal.

Just as the person being treated with exposure therapy is exposed to the objects of their anxiety and the negative feelings associated with them, the attender is exposed to the cravings of intermittent abstinence.

With the insertion of a Withdraw-MAC into the Target-MAC, exposure to the negative feelings becomes unavoidable.

Parallels to exposure therapy show, when a Withdraw-MAC exposes the attender to a tolerable dose of withdrawal sensations. Like in the exposure therapy model, the attender firstly chooses the Repetition-Rate so that the next attending is not too far in the future.

If, after repeated confrontation with short-term abstinence, the negative feelings have clearly decreased, the duration of the Withdraw-MAC can be increased. This is done by increasing the Repetition-Ideal once again.

With growing habituation, the attender progressively selects longer or even several consecutive withdraw MACs.

The negative reinforcement accumulated by the Target-MAC gradually dissipates with the consistent use of withdraw MACs. The attender experiences fewer and fewer cravings and feelings of withdrawal. Eventually, they are no longer caused by abstinent behavior at all. (Wolpe, 1958)

Decrease of Motive-Power (of the positive Motive of the Target-MAC)

Another crucial factor in regaining control over “bad” habits and for dissolving addictions is to tackle the element of a MAC that is valued as beneficial by the attender’s brain, which is the positive motive. As already mentioned, what is evaluated as beneficial by the brain is not necessarily perceived as positive by the attender.

The need to dissolve positive motives applies in particular to addictions where a single initial use of a drug can lead to what is known as “the chasing of the dragon”. This phrase is a metaphor often used in the context of drug addiction and refers specifically to the pursuit of the euphoric feeling experienced when first using a drug. The attender seeks to re-experience the intense pleasure they felt when they first used drugs – a pursuit that typically reinforces the addiction.

Regardless of whether this drive is primarily fed unconsciously by the brain’s evaluation or whether the attender consciously pursues this desire, the positive Motive-Power is the origin of the goal-directed behavior.

As long as the positive motive is strong, the habit remains unbroken and even abstinent attenders will remain at risk of relapsing.

Without dissolution of the positive motive there will be no “healing”. Once it is dissolved, however, not only cue-reactivity disappears from the attender’s life. They are even put into the state in which they were before they lost control of the habit. Then, even occasional attendings, so-called “lapses”, cannot put them in danger of relapsing.

With the reduction of the Repetition-Rate in the Pruning-MAC, the target-attending becomes a limited resource and thus lowers the strength of Attending-discounting. This in turn leads to an increase in attention-power and Attending-Coherence.

As a result, the degree of recoding of the Motive-Power is much higher than in the case of an Attending-Actualization of an attending with high attending-discounting. The alteration of Motive-Power now adapts in the direction of the actual “liking”/” disliking” experienced in the attending.

As “the liking” in addictions and strong habits is usually much lower than represented by the Motive-Power high motive-recoding-power leads to a decrease of Motive-Power on average.

(also see: The recoding of Motive-Power and Incentive (De)sensitization)

Increasing of Motive-Power (of the negative Motive of the Pruning-MAC)

The negative motive of the Pruning-MAC is the desire to dissolve the negative effects generated by the Target-MAC. Consequently, the strength of the negative motive depends greatly on the strength of the target-attending’s negative effects and on the perceived strength of these effects.

The subjectively perceived strength can differ greatly from the actual strength. It may be perceived as significantly lower due to habituation and ignorance of the interrelationships of cause and effect.

The Attender either does not perceive a need for change or does not even recognize it.

The dishabitization brought about by the Pruning-MAC causes negative effects to be perceived more strongly again.

Maybe a person struggles with chronic insomnia, waking up nightly and unable to sleep for hours. After years of accepting this as part of life and unsuccessfully seeking solutions, they’ve learned to live with it.

Unrelatedly, they decide to change their excessive coffee-drinking habit, limiting it to two cups daily and none after 5 pm. It takes time to adjust, and they occasionally still drink evening coffee.

They notice a correlation between late-night coffee consumption and insomnia. Over time, they recognize the causal relationship: when they drink coffee in the evening, they sleep poorly that night.

The resulting awareness of the newly recognized connection reinforces the Motive-Power of the Pruning-MAC.

The second major factor contributing to the growth of negative Motive-Power is dishabituation. This does not refer to the decline in habituation to caffeine or other coffee-drinking stimulants; it refers to the decline in habituation to the effects of poor sleep.

Due to the decline in habituation, the subjectively perceived negative consequences of poor sleep will appear much more serious. However, these consequences themselves do not become more serious because of the dishabituation, they are only more strongly perceived.

While target-attendings become rarer as part of the Pruning-MAC, the learning effect becomes greater. When he wakes up at night because of late attending, Their insight becomes clearer and clearer: “I should have spared myself that today.”

By adhering to the new behavioral rule, target-attending and its cues, as well as the Decision-Making-Process itself, become cues of the Pruning-MAC. So as soon as he begins to follow the goal-directed behavior, the target-attending to drink a cup of coffee in the evening, he is reminded that he will sleep badly if he follows it.

The cues of the new, negative motive are expanded and refined over time. Eventually, the thought of coffee perceived in the morning becomes a cue for the negative motive. They begin to plan and organize the daily coffee-pursuing-behavior from the outset so that the last coffee is consumed before 5 pm.

If they ask themselves in future whether they want to make an exception, they begin to consciously evaluate whether the attending in question is worth sacrificing their good night’s sleep for.

The negative pruning motive to escape the consequences of the habit thus increases steadily as the habit decreases.

Increase of Resilience

The reason for the attender’s development of resilience is not just a drop in motive and Cue-Power and the re-synchronization of wanting and liking. They are not only set back to zero and experience occurring attendings as they did before they became addicted.

The attender has gone through the natural process of “maturing out of addiction”. Of course, they can become addicted again if they develop new motives due to changes in their life circumstances.

After maturing out of an addiction, however, this will rarely happen, because unlike the initial getting addicted, this time they have a large repertoire of experiences at their disposal to prevent them from doing so.(Winick, 1962)

As long-term protection, the attender also remains with their last Repetition-Ideal, which over time transitions from being defined by words and numbers into intuitive knowledge and lived wisdom.

In his paradigm-challenging book “The Biology of Desire”, Dr. Marc Lewis gives an example of a meth-amphetamine addiction. Long after overcoming his addiction, the attender had “rare occasions when he still smoked meth”. These occasions were far from triggering a relapse. On the contrary, they confirmed to the attender that it “wasn’t the brightest idea” to have had an attending, that is, to have smoked meth. “Now I won’t be able to sleep tonight”. (Lewis, 2015)

The attender in the above example had intuitively created a Pruning-MAC, which had as its pruning attentive “usually not to smoke meth”. The crucial point here is that the beauty of resilience does not lie in being able to uphold absolute abstinence, but in not relapsing because of a lapse.

In this case, the experienced Motive-Actualization of the Target-MAC was a negative one instead of the expected positive one. Because of the high degree of Attending-Coherence, this experience led to even further decrease of the target-Motive-Power. Instead of leading to relapse it brings further growth of resilience.

The Collapse of the Attender’s Habit related Self-Identification

A person’s self-image changes with their habits. If a habitual MAC is no longer activated as often, the attender no longer behaves according to that particular aspect of their life.

They begin to unlearn aspects of their identity. The less they identify with a person who behaves the way they used to, the less their identity will push them to do so.

The identity power of being a drinker, a smoker, a person with bulimic disorder or whatever decreases. As the attending decision process leads to the attender saying “no” more often than “yes”, the identity power decreases. (also see: Identity and  Control-Threshold-Hypothesis)

Self-Empowerment

The Decision-Making-Process of the Pruning-MAC becomes a new intrinsic cue of the Target-MAC. When the Target-MAC becomes active, the mental representation of the decision-making-process itself is the cue that is increasingly interconnected with the target-Attending-Actualization.

After each pruning-cycle, the predictive power of the new cue continues to grow. Its growing predictive power results in being followed more and more frequently. Now the conscious Decision-Making-Process not only becomes a new cue, but it even becomes the most reliable cue of the Target-MAC. As a result, the attender increasingly acts in accordance with their rational decisions.

The positive reinforcement of the pruning motive can produce “growth mindset mentality”, the experienced ability of being able to stand up to and beat a “bad” habit or even an addiction.

Motives like “having life under control” are strengthened or newly created. The attender can develop a positive feedback loop and become a self-controlled person in other respects, too.

Incentive Desensitization

In a paper published in 1993, Terry E. Robinson and Kent C. Berridge described the relationship between “incentive salience” and the development of addictive behavior.

“Incentive salience is the perceived importance of the reward, which contrasts with the actual enjoyment of it. Excessive “wanting” leads to constantly repetitive addictive behavior despite low “liking”.

According to their “Incentive-Sensitization Theory,” Kent and Berridge argue that “incentive salience” is an important factor in the development of addictive behavior because it increases motivation and craving for a drug or behavior.

It results from “incentive sensitization”, a process that is triggered by the repetition of experiences with a certain stimulus and leads to a strengthening of the neuronal representation of this stimulus.

Over time, this can lead to an increased response to the stimulus, even if the stimulus is not always pleasant or desirable. This can lead to a stimulus being perceived as stronger or more important over time, even if the actual physiological effect of the stimulus has not changed. Parallel to the strengthening of the addiction, the “wanting” of the attending increases, while the “liking” of the attending decreases.(Berridge & Robinson, 2016)

The “liking” is not a purpose, the liking has a purpose. This is not to receive a reward, but to strive for it. The purpose of liking is to create wanting, the purpose of wanting is to let the Decision-Making-Process decide on the attending which has the most actualization-power which is fed by the Motive-Powers which were once created by different “likings”.

While the conscious mind strives for happiness, the unconscious is rather indifferent to it. Happiness is not important, at least not very much for human motivation. Being happy and content is nice, but it does not help us survive, nor does it increase the chances of passing on our genes to the next generation. At least not directly.

Life doesn’t care whether we dislike it or not. “Liking” is important for the emergence of motives. However, as soon as a motive is present, regardless of its possible actualization, “wanting” takes over.

Expressed with the terminology of the ATM, incentive sensitization happens when an Attending-Actualization-power is becoming too high. This will typically be that of a corrupted-attending.

This attending is not connected to one, but to different MACs. Namely through their different motives, which all stem from the “wanting” of different experiences of “liking” or “disliking”.

As described above (see: Corrupted-Attending), the original behavior, which has “liking” as a positive motive, gives rise to a second behavior with the negative motive or “disliking”.

Because both behaviors share the same, the now Corrupted-Attending they are nearly indistinguishable at first glance. On common sense level they appear to be the same behavior. Even from the perspective of watching a person act it is the same behavior, however, to the brain the acting out of a given deed can be incarnate multiple behaviors. (see: multiple motives)

Tolerance building, cravings and Power-Modulators such as identity feed the negative motive with each actualization of the corrupted-attending. Thus, the growing strength of the Corrupted-Attending-Actualization-Power emerges more and more from the new negative motive. The same applies to predictive cues.

At the same time, the positive motive of the original habitual MAC does not decrease significantly. As a rule, it is not recoded even if the attendings do not bring the desired positive experiences (“the liking” that was predicted. (see Motive-Power recoding)

Incentive desensitization, the reversing of incentive sensitization takes place with the Attending-Actualization-power decreases as described above and is mainly due to the decrease of Motive-Power.

Dishabitizing with a Pruning-MAC

Counterintuitively, not abstinence but only non-abstinence can heal an addiction. Of course, it must be a form of controlled non-abstinence which is named intermittent abstinence here for the lack of existing, established terms. The actualization of the attendings that are compliant with the rule are the most important building blocks of dishabitization. As described above (see: The impacts of the Pruning-MAC) both, Motive-Power and Cue-Power can only dissolve with Attending-Actualization and Motive-Actualization.

The Pruning-MAC can be used as a mental tool to dissolve an addiction. Of course, a tool is only as good as its suitability for the task at hand. You can open a glass bottle with an axe, but the result could be rather modest, and who would try to chop down a tree with a bottle opener?

If it’s a tree you want to cut down, you need the right tool for the job. When you choose an axe, it needs to be the right size for your body, you need to be able to handle it and swing it. It needs to be made of good material and – last but not least – it needs to be sharp and to be sharpened from time to time.

By adding the pruning attentive “Repetition-Ideal” to the Coping-MAC it becomes a Pruning-MAC. This new attentive can be expressed in concrete numbers (attendings per time unit) or be more casual like “today less attendings than yesterday.”

One way to look at it is the imposition of a behavioral rule of delayed gratification.

Mental imaging can be a considerable assistance in the process of transforming the current Repetition-Ideal into the new repetition-rate.

Various academic papers and studies have investigated the relationship between images and subconscious processes and have shown that the subconscious mind processes information primarily with mental images. (Kosslyn et al., 2001)

The attender coaches their own subconscious, so to speak, with the Pruning-MAC and trains it with the Withdraw-MAC. Here, speaking the visual language of the subconscious is invaluable for successful coaching. Logic translates the statements of figurative language into the rational realm of the conscious mind and, vice versa, rational thoughts are translated into pictures for the emotional and the bodily mind to understand.

Of course, the concept of visual language presented here as the language of the subconscious is greatly simplified. A more comprehensive understanding is easily obtained by observing the way we dream. Dreams defy the laws of logic. We experience strong feelings and extraordinary emotions while dreaming. While we sleep, these experiences are carried by a river of visions.

If we want to speak and understand the imagery of the non-conscious mind correctly, we have to bear in mind that there are some concepts that cannot be translated without complication. There is neither a pictorial equivalent for the rational concept of time nor for nothingness.

The sequence of attendings translates into the concept of time. Therefore, the attender should set the Outdraw-Cue to a certain Attending-Actualization like “after dinner” instead of a certain time.

Have you ever tried to think nothing without suppressing thoughts or even to imagine nothingness? There is no image for nothing. Don’t think of monkeys now! When this is said, images of monkeys immediately arise in the mind’s eye. In figurative language there can be no image that corresponds to the word “nothing”.

This is one of the problems associated with absolute abstinence. For example, if a smoker willingly stops saying to themselves: “I will never smoke again!”, countless images arise in his mind of them smoking a cigarette in various ways. In case of absolute abstinence, each of these mental representations can become their downfall and as a triggering cue lead them to relapse.

In the case of intermittent abstinence, on the other hand, there is the image of the Outdraw-Cue, which symbolizes the initiation of the next Attending-Actualization. This is how the nothing (null attendings) within the interval of abstinence is expressed.

In his book “Zen Golf: Mastering the Mental Game,” Dr. Joseph Parent, Ph.D., discusses how focusing on negative outcomes, even when trying to avoid them, can lead to producing those outcomes unintentionally. Here is a passage from the book that illustrates this phenomenon:

“For example, I’ve worked with a lot of golfers who have problems with bunkers. They tell themselves things like ‘don’t go into the bunker, don’t go into the bunker’. But these negative images almost guarantee the exact result they are trying to avoid. They have the image in their head that the ball is going into the bunker. As a result, their bodily tendency is to naturally head for the bunker. The subconscious will always follow the image you give it.”(Parent, 2002)

His solution to this problem is simple: as soon as you become aware of the thought of the ball in the bunker, you replace this image with the visual movement from the tee shot to the green. In doing so, you see the ball flying over the bunker in your mind’s eye.

Similarly, the green would be the pruning-attending and the bunker a target-Attending-Actualization. As described above, the two attendings are basically the same. Only that the target-attending would take place earlier than planned by the attender.

To prevent this from happening, they can create an image of the next target-attending. The attender imagines how their goal-directed behavior follows from the here & now (teeing area) via the withdraw-MAC (trajectory of the golf ball) to the Outdraw-Cue (the green). Only after reaching the Outdraw-Cue they picture the target-Attending-Actualization (the putting).

Defining a Repetition-Ideal

The effectiveness of a Pruning-MAC does not only depend on how strong the desire for change is but also on the choice of the right Repetition-Ideal

1. Non-numerical Repetition-Ideals: The attender may vaguely define their Repetition-Ideal as somewhat less every day, every week or every month. Most athletes train according to sophisticated training plans. These not only specify exactly when and how long the exercises should be, but also when which performance values should be achieved.

This can be a great help and may be essential for professional runners. However, some runners, for example, do not use training plans at all when preparing for a marathon. They go entirely by spontaneous intuition and their highly developed sense of listening to their own body. These athletes often find a balance between exertion and regeneration during training itself. They have acquired the ability to push themselves to their physical limits without overexerting themselves.

Transferred to dishabitization, this would mean delaying any attending of a habit to be dissolved for as long as possible. They do not overexert themselves, but allow themselves an indulgence when they feel they have endured a sufficient portion of withdrawal for this time. The attender trains their ability to cope with longer and longer periods of time without attending. To achieve this, they set themselves a specific Outdraw-Cue every time the need for an attending arises in them. In this way, they make a conscious cognitive decision that takes into account the factors of emotions and feelings.

Someone who wants to reduce their coffee consumption, for example, may not yet know which Repetition-Ideal would be best for their body-mind complex. He must first find this out by gradually reducing their consumption level.

Such a coffee-attender may do without a numerical Repetition-Ideal and decide spontaneously from day to day – or better: from attending to attending. If he normally has coffee as the first action of the day, he will probably wake up with the desire for coffee. The impulse to make coffee triggers the activation of the Pruning-MAC “less coffee”.

He is now ready to make a conscious and cognitive decision about how long he is willing and able to go without coffee. Perhaps he takes “after the shower” as an Outdraw-Cue, which would make the shower itself a Withdraw-Mac. If after a while he gets used to getting coffee only after showering, he is ready to introduce a second Withdraw-Mac. This could be eating breakfast. So, the Outdraw-Cue would be finishing breakfast.

Of course, this attender would not only change their morning habits but would deal in the same way with any emerging need for coffee during the rest of the day.

Consequently, the attender can continue to reduce their consumption until they reach a level where they feel they have achieved a good balance between the good and bad effects of coffee.

• Many people on the other hand do better by setting specific goals. To be concise, the attender can express their Repetition-Ideal in numbers and time. They decide on the ratio of attendings per unit of time that would correspond to their ideal for the next stage of development.

If it is set too low, the relatively long duration of withdraw MACs will expose the attender to unbearable feelings of withdrawal. Feelings and emotions can quickly overpower the attender’s rationality, causing them to “go weak” and make exceptions to the rule. As these exceptions pile up, they become the new rule itself, and the attender loses control of their behavior change.

The attender usually approaches their final repletion-ideal in stages. Perhaps a comparison can be drawn here with the various levels of increasingly higher ability in the rank system of eastern martial arts.

In martial arts such as karate, judo or teak-won-do, practitioners usually go through a belt ranking system that indicates their skills and experience. As they progress through the ranks, students must demonstrate mastery of certain techniques and principles before reaching the next level.

Traditionally, the beginner is given a white belt, no color indicates that they are not yet skilled. Yellow stands for the soil in which a plant seed has been sown. Green stands for leaves that are sprouting. The red belt symbolizes a plant bearing flowers. Finally, all the elements come together, the student finally mastersTheir martial art, when all the colors come together, they get the black – they become the black belt.

Each level must be mastered before you can move on to the next. The same applies to dishabitization using a Pruning-MAC. The Attender definesTheir end-Repetition-Ideal, which stands for the black belt, so to speak. Whether this is absolute abstinence or intermittent abstinence is up to the attender.

Unlike the belt system in martial arts, however, the attender does not have to define all levels in advance. It is enough if he knows the final goal and always defines the subsequent level when the current one will be mastered.

The white belt of addiction dissolution would be the stage of self-observation before beginning to define the Repetition-Ideal of the first stage. The next stage would be the equivalent of the yellow belt. The attender definesTheir first Repetition-Ideal and works on it until it has been internalized and has become a rule that guides the attender smoothly.

Step by step, color by color, the attender changes their Repetition-Ideal. It doesn’t matter how many steps it takes to become a “black belt” and of course, there is no need to use the analogy of martial arts.

In most cases of dishabitizing, even the first Repetition-Ideal of the Pruning-MAC will only be a fraction of the Repetition-Rate of the Target-MAC.

This is the ideal repetition-rate for the first stage of breaking the habit. It lies somewhere between the status quo and absolute abstinence. If it is chosen too close to the current Repetition-Rate of the target-attending, obviously not much difference can be achieved. On the other hand, if the attender stets the bar to high, he could fall back into the habitual behavior pattern.

Decision-making with the Pruning-MAC

After a Repetition-Ideal for the current stage of dishabitizing has been set the Pruning-MAC can support the attender in making the right decisions and (re)gain top-bottom-cognitive-control over their habitual or addictive behavior.

Instead of acting automatically, now the pruning rule will make the attender make conscious, rational decisions concerning the succeeding subsequent target-Attending-Actualization. It will make them accountable to themselves for their decisions. Following the rule both, forces and empowers the attender to make a conscious decision about when and how much they want and need to prune their habit.

The rule of conduct that the Attender has imposed on themselves can serve as a guideline for the Decision-Making-Process at this point. The art of pruning a habit is to make the right decision about the context in which the next attending should be actualized.

Occasional non-thinking and the associated avoidance or skipping of decisions should be a red flag for the attender. If possible, they should not make any exceptions to the conscious and rational decision-making about the next attending. Only through consistency can complete dishabitization be ensured. If an attending is appropriate to the Repetition-Ideal, it can be actualized without delaying gratification.

If an Attending-Actualization does not comply with the self-imposed rule of conduct, it is to be postponed. To prevent the target-Attending-Actualization from being actualized too early, the attender can insert a withdraw-MAC.

The decision to be made is always uniquely about the contextual reframing of the coming target-Attending-Actualization. The attender has to work out what exactly the withdraw-attending and what exactly the Outdraw-Cue ought to be.

After initiation of the withdraw MAC, the Target-MAC remains active. However, the direction-making-process now directs the goal-directed-behavior to take the detour via the actualization of the withdraw-attending and to aim at the target-attending again only after the appearance of the Outdraw-Cue.

The Maintenance and Readaptation of a Pruning-MAC

Following the rule versus making exceptions to the rule is a balancing act that many people find difficult to maintain at first. With patience, however, this can be learned by anyone. Most people are quick to say they have no patience. Patience can be learned. As the German saying goes: “Patience is the reward for patience.”

The rule should be considered and followed as a guideline not as a law. If the attender is too strict about abiding by the rule, this can lead to the rule collapsing. On the other hand, if the rule is too lax, the same applies.

Furthermore, there is no need to be too strict or to reduce the repetition-rate very fast. Naturally, there may be exceptions like medical conditions that require the attender to lower the frequency of attendings. Apart from that, the dishabitization process is neither a race nor competition. Nor should the attender’s ego get involved and take pride in being fast with dissolving their habits.

In rare cases, an attending can be actualized immediately even if this is not within the boundaries of the Repetition-Ideal. Exceptions are known to prove the rule- rules know exceptions.

Nevertheless, and precisely for this reason, care must be taken to ensure that exceptions remain exceptions. If there are too many exceptions, they become the rule and the attentive Repetition-Ideal blurs and disappears. If this is the case, it must be examined how this can be avoided in the future. Accordingly, the Repetition-Ideal can be adjusted.

If there is progress and the Pruning-MAC has established and the target-attendings have gotten less, what used to be “little” in the beginning of the process will become the new normal. This results from the natural process of habituation to withdrawal symptoms on the one hand, and the onset of the dissolution of cue and Motive-Powers on the other.

When the attender has reached this point, they will hopefully be more knowledgeable about themselves and have lost the lions’ shares of pressure to change. Now they will be clearer about their own ideal of habitual behavior and can decide upon what will be the next level to reach. However, this does not mean that an addiction has completely dissolved.

Whether the attender is satisfied with having reached this stage is something they must weigh for themselves. Individual judgments about this naturally depend on factors such as health status, age, life circumstances or general aversion to smoking itself.

As a rule, however, the achieved quota of less than n attendings per time should only be the first step on a path that may be a long one.

If the attender wants to further reduce the number of attendings, in a second step, the attentive “Repetition-Ideal” of pruning-attending is to be redefined. As with the first definition, the aim is to strike a balance between the two opposing forces, the target-Attending-Actualization-power (the craving) and the pruning-Attending-Actualization-power (the wanting to change).

For every stage reached a new rule can be introduced and the cycle may repeat.

Then Ending of a Pruning-MAC

Over time, behavioral rules become habits – of course, only according to the degree to which they are followed. Thus, the Pruning-MAC becomes a habitual-MAC and substitutes the Target-MAC. There are various scenarios for this:

1. The pruning is completed when the actual repetition-rate permanently matches the current Repetition-Ideal and the attender is satisfied with the status quo.
2. The pruning is also complete when the attender has entered abstinence uncoerced. Uncoerced here means that they have not just rationally decided to be abstinent and suppress the urge to smoke. Rather, this may be the case when their liking of the target-attendings was low to begin with and the “wanting” has adapted to their “liking”.
3.  An attender chooses early abstinence rather than seeking non-abstinent dissolution of the addiction. In some cases, the decision to abstain may be made before the addiction is dissolved. For example, if an attender believes that dishabitizing will take more time than their health will allow. Such an emergency stop may be necessary if circumstances change, such as the occurrence of a new medical diagnosis or obtaining new opinions about the effects of the addiction. In this case, the Pruning-MAC would revert to a Coping-MAC with the goal of being abstinent.

However, even an end goal Repetition-Ideal is not set in stone. The attender can lower or even raise it again at any time due to better insight, changes in life circumstances or other reasons.

A Motive-Power-Equation

It is not necessary to deal with the practical application of dishabitization. The idea for power equations came about as an accidental by-product when writing the ATM. It is not intended to explain how the dissolution of Motive-Power works, but rather to show how the dissolution of Motive-Power could work.

Or, more precisely, to attempt a mathematical representation of how the process of incentive sensitization can be reversed by non-abstinent behavior.

The Motive-Power Equation, a speculative mathematical framework is designed to model the dissolution and reinforcement of Motive-Power. While the equation remains untested on empirical data, it offers a structured approach to conceptualizing how various psychological factors interact to influence motivation. If you don’t like new, radical ideas that lack all kinds of scrutiny, please consider to not read this chapter.

The equations are really still in their infancy and the deadline for the release of version 0.7 does not allow for any further improvements. They will be revised and improved in future versions.The factor Repetition-Row, for example, may just as well turn out to be rather: ReRo = 0.5 + 0.5 * (n/(n+1)) or maybe there are more factors to be considered etc.

The learning curves for both Motive-Power and Cue-Power are probably chosen to steeply, this was to better illustrate the possible effects of varying the different factors.

The equation may be simplified in a further version. For example, the interplay of Repetition-Row and Success-Proximity in the Cue-Power-Equation may be too complex and abstract to reflect to synaptic processes in the brain.

If they prove to be practicable and are positively evaluated and accepted by the readership, they will be improved for future versions.

The formula is intended to illustrate the recoding of Motive-Power, not its encoding:

With the Prediction Difference being:   :

The factors and coefficients Motive-Power equation are:

Motive-Power (MoPo):

The value of the Motive-Power takes after revaluation.

Expected Motive-Power (ExMoPo):

The value of the Motive-Power before revaluation (expected by the brain)

Actual Motive-Power (MoPo):

The value of the Motive-Power experienced in terms of liking and disliking by the brain in the moment of Attending-Actualization with Motive-Actualization)

Prediction Difference (PreDi):

The value of the prediction difference factor is the difference between expected and actual Motive-Power.

Attending discounting (Atg-Dis):

Decrease of value of Attending-Power due to overabundance. (see Attending discounting )

Attending-Coherence (AtnCo):

This factor represents the degree of coherence between the expected and the actually experienced attending. (This factor could be called Attentives-Coherence, as well, as its valence depends on the degree of coherence of all the attentives. If they are all what was aimed for, the value of the attentive coherence will be 1. Accordingly, it will be lower with each attending that is not as expected.)

Thus, it can take values from >0 to 1, where 0 = no coherence at all and 1 = absolute coherence.

The bigger the deviation of the attentives from their mental representations of the predictive cues followed, the lower the Attending-Coherence.

This factor prevents the Motive-Power from decreasing “for the wrong reasons”.

Example: If the soup you ordered in a restaurant no longer tastes as good as last time, you might ask yourself why not. If you then find out that it was prepared by a different chef today, you might tell yourself that next time you will make sure that the chef is the other one before you order the soup again. The attentive “chef” was not coherent, so the value of Attending-Coherence decreases. This process can take place consciously and/or unconsciously.

Attention-power (AtnPo):

The less the attender’s consciousness is focused on attending, the less the brain perceives and values Attending-Actualization. The strength of attention on the attending is one of the crucial factors on which the degree of Motive-Actualization depends.

To protect itself from making “blind” changes to the Motive-Power, the brain limits the possible degree of change relative to the degree of Motive-Actualization, which it is actualized according to the strength of the attending-power.

Repetition-Row (ReRo):

Accounts for the effect of repeated successes or failures in goal prediction, influencing the cue’s reliability. This factor takes into account the importance indicated by a result with repetition in the sequence.

If the trend direction (increase or decrease) of the prediction difference repeats itself, this is an indication that this trend direction of the deviation is not a random tendency. The more repetitions there are in a series, the stronger the relative change in Motive-Power should be.

With its default value of ½, the new value of the repetition-row factor results from the value before the motive was actualized and increases in the same direction with each repetition:

One time “success”, default value at start      = 0,50

Twice “success” in a row:                              = 0,75

Three times “success” in a row:                     = 0,88

Four times “success” in the row:                    = 0,94

Five times “success” in a row:                       = 0,97

The strength of the factor Repetition-Row is set back to the default value of 0.5 at each change of from “no success” to “success”.

One time, no success”, default value at start = -0,50

Twice “no success” in a row:                         = -0,75

Three times “no success” in a row:                            = -0,88

Four times “no success” in the row:                           = -0,94

Five times “no success” in a row:                              = -0,97

The strength of the factor Repetition-Row is set back to the default value of -0.5 at each change of from “success” to “no success”.

Examples of the Motive-Power Equation

Please note that this example with this positive motive is simplified. In reality there are many different MACs and motives for each attending. Only one is taken into account here.

1. First attending:

An attender makes a new experience. They experience 90% of the maximal possible “liking”. After making the new experience, the positive motive was encoded with a valence of 0.9 (for 90% “liking).

   Motive-Power: MoPo = 0.9

• Second attending with high level of “liking”:

The Attending-Actualization-power has become high again and the MAC has entered its active phase. In this cycle of the Motive-Actualization, the attender perceives the Motive-Actualization less positively than in the first experience with a valence of 0.8, but still very high.

Motive-Power: MoPo = 0.9

Actual-Motive-Power:   = 0.8

Prediction difference: PreDi = 0.8-0.9

Repetition-row: The mathematical sign of the prediction difference has changed from plus to minus. Therefore, the default value for the start of a series is assumed here.

 ReRo = 0.5

Attending-Coherence: The attentives correspond to a high degree to the searched ones.

Attending discounting: The attending is perceived by the brain as a limited resource and the benefit/cost ratio as very high.

  0.95

Attention-power: The attender is subject to distractions during the Attending-Actualization; therefore the attention-power is rather low.

The factors are used in the Motive-Power equation:

Motive-Power

0.9+(−0.000855) =0.9−0.000855

Motive-Power = 0.899145

As expected, the Motive-Power of the MAC has hardly changed. The attender liked the attending again and would like to repeat it. But would he also want to repeat it if he had not liked it?

This question alludes to the phenomenon of incentive sensitization. Why does the “wanting” increase in the course of an addiction, while “liking” decreases? How can an attender want to repeat an experience if they don’t like it? How can Attending-Actualization-Power grow if the degree of Motive-Actualization only is small?

According to the ATM, Motive-Power can only be reduced in mostly small steps. For each of these steps, the completion of a whole MAC is necessary. The extent of the change in Motive-Power depends on the strength of the factors in the Motive-Power equation.

Incentive desensitization is mainly inhibited by low valences of Attending-Coherence, Attending-discounting and Attention-power.

• Second attending with low level of “liking”:

In this Motive-Actualization, the “liking”, the degree of Actual-Motive-Power is low at 20%:

Motive-Power: MoPo = 0.9 (as above)

Actual-Motive-Power:   = 0.2 (low “liking”)

Prediction difference: PreDi = 0.2-0.9

The other values stay the same as above.

Motive-Power

=0.9−0.005985

Motive-Power = 0.894015

Contrary to what might have been expected with a low “liking”, the motivation to repeat the experience has hardly diminished.

From the brain’s point of view, there is not enough evidence of the need to lower the “wanting”. This is because the attender was physically present, only. Their awareness in the form of attention-power was bound up in other MACs. The logic of the brain can therefore not attribute the low “liking” to the attending in question.

This is consistent with the description of the phenomenon of “incentive salience” (incentive sensitization). Although an addicted person experiences the consumption of the highly desired object of their addiction as little enjoyable (the “liking”), this has little influence on the alteration of their desires (the “wanting”). Expressed with the terminology of ATM: Even though the Actual-Motive-Power is much lower than the Expected-Motive-Power, the Motive-Power hardly diminishes.

According to the ATM, the reason for this lies in the values of the other factors. For the next calculation we want to increase the value of Attention-Power (AtnPo) while using the above examples again.

• Second attending with high level of “liking” and high level of Attention Power:

Motive-Power

0.9+(−0.004275)

=0.9−0.004275

Motive-Power = 0.895725

The percentage drop is 0.475% in total. Considering that the percentage drop should be measured between 0.9 and 0.8 it is about five percent.

• Second attending with low level of “liking” and high level of Attention Power:

In this Motive-Actualization, the “liking”, the degree of Actual-Motive-Power is low at 20%again with Attention-Power of 100%

Motive-Power

= 0.9+(−0.029925) =0.9−0.029925

Motive-Power = 0.870075

The percentage drop here is 3.325% which would be huge in reality. Of course, an Attention-Power of 100% would only occur in reality in extreme situations.

However, this example wants to give an idea of the possibly huge influence of Attention on the alteration of Motive-Power.

The same can be stated about the other factors. Let’s see if anybody is interested in more of this chapter, in which case it will be prolonged in the next version.

A Cue-Power-Equation

The equation aims to quantify how the predictive power of a cue changes based on various factors like follow coherence, goal coherence, repetition, and success proximity. It’s a dynamic model where the initial predictive power (ExCuPo) is adjusted by these factors to result in a new predictive power of the cue, its new Cue-Power.

The following applies:

1. CuPo (Cue-Power):

The predictive power the cue has after Goal-Actualization

• ExCuPo (Expected Cue-Power):

Serves as a baseline or initial expectation, reflecting the brain’s predictive model of the cue’s effectiveness.

It’s the valence that the Cue-Power had when the attender began to follow it. This is the value expected by the brain, the predictive value.

Its basic expectation is that everything will remain as it is. As above, the weighted average method is chosen to illustrate how the power can change. The default value is set at 0.5. Possible values are >0 to 1. Valence 1 would stand for a cue with 100% predictive power. If a cue takes on the value 0, it loses all predictive power and vanishes.

• FoCo (Follow Coherence):

Measures how well the action taken follows the cue’s suggestion. The degree to which the cue to directly actualize a goal was followed. This factor can take on values between >0 and 1. 1 would be the value indicating that the cue was followed unconditionally. The direction-finding-process turned the attender exactly as the cue suggested and attending was directly actualized.

1. Goal coherence (GoCo):

The coherence between the expected goal and the actual actualization of the goal to which the cue pointed.

Possible values for this are >0 to 1. 1 would stand for a cue with 100% coherence. (“This Attending is exactly what I was looking for”) and 0 for 0% coherence (“This is not at all what I was looking for”).

• ReRo (Repetition Row):

Accounts for the effect of repeated successes or failures in goal prediction, influencing the cue’s reliability. This factor takes into account the importance indicated by a result with repetition in the sequence.

If the trend direction (increase or decrease) of the prediction difference repeats itself, this is an indication that this trend direction of the deviation is not a random tendency. The more repetitions there are in a series, the stronger the relative change in Motive-Power should be.

With its default value of ½, the new value of the repetition-row factor results from the value before the motive was actualized and increases in the same direction with each repetition:

One time “success”, default value at start      = 0,50

Twice “success” in a row:                              = 0,75

Three times “success” in a row:                     = 0,88

Four times “success” in the row:                    = 0,94

Five times “success” in a row:                                   = 0,97

The strength of the factor Repetition-Row is set back to the default value of 0.5 at each change of from “no success” to “success”.

One time, no success”, default value at start = -0,50

Twice “no success” in a row:                                     = -0,75

Three times “no success” in a row:                            = -0,88

Four times “no success” in the row:                           = -0,94

Five times “no success” in a row:                              = -0,97

The strength of the factor Repetition-Row is set back to the default value of -0.5 at each change of from “success” to “no success”.

• SuPr (Success Proximity):

Quantifies how immediate the success is after following the cue, with an exponential decay for delayed gratification. The more directly a goal is actualized after following a cue, the more predictive-power is encoded into the cue. The ATM suggests an exponential decay for the curve of the valence of this factor. If the goal is actualized without another attending in between, this factor should be 1.0. For each additional attending in between, the value should be halved.

No attending in between:        SuPr = 1.0

One attending in between:      SuPr = 0.5

Two attendings in between:    SuPr = 0.25

Three attendings in between: SuPr = 0.125

Examples for the Cue-Power equation

Various cases of changes in the predictive power of a target-cue will be considered. As described above, the changes are brought about by following the cue and Attending-Actualization. (Attending-Actualization of both pruning and Target-MAC).

1. SuPr (Success Proximity):

Quantifies how immediate the success is after following the cue, with an exponential decay for delayed gratification. The more directly a goal is actualized after following a cue, the more predictive-power is encoded into the cue. The ATM suggests a linear decay for the curve of the valence of this factor:

Direct success:                                                            SuPr=1.0

Success after 1 other attending:                      SuPr=0.5

Success after 2 other attendings:                    SuPr=0.0

Success after 3 other attendings:                    SuPr=-0.5

Success after 4 or more other attendings:             SuPr=-1.0

Every Withdraw-MAC is inserting one different attending(-actualization) in between the triggering of the cue and the success (goal-actualization) in following it.

Examples of varying Success-Proximity

The following examples want to demonstrate how the factor Success-Proximity may influence the alteration of Cue-Power.

In these, a smoker’s desire to smoke is triggered by a cue for the first cigarette of the day.

The other factors are:

Expected-Cue-Power:             ExCuPo          = 0.85

Follow-Coherence:     FoCo               = 0.5

Goal-Coherence:                     GoCo = 0.6

Example1)

The smoker lights up immediately.

The goal is actualized without another attending in between, thus the factor Success-Proximity  becomes: SuPr = 1.0

= 0.85+0.045=0.895

The Cue-Power has risen to 89.5%

Example 2)

Before smoking the cigarette, the smoker decides to insert the Withdraw-MAC “doing the dishes” with the Outdraw-Cue “sink is clean again.”

The goal is actualized after 1 another attending (part of a Withdraw-MAC) in between, thus the factor Success-Proximity  becomes: SuPr = 0.5

0.85+0.0225=0.8725

The Cue-Power has risen to 87.25%

Example 3)

A second Withdraw-MAC is inserted (“no success” the second time in a row). The smoker from the example above decides to insert the Withdraw-MACs “doing the dishes” plus “go for a run & take a shower & put on fresh clothing” with the Outdraw-Cue “fresh clothes are put on”:

The goal is actualized after 2 other attendings in between, thus the factor Success-Proximity  becomes: SuPr = 0.0

0.85+0=0.85

No alteration of Cue-Power

Example 4)

A third Withdraw-MAC is inserted (“no success” the second time in a row). The smoker from the example above decides to insert the Withdraw-MACs “doing the dishes”, then “go for a run & take a shower & put on fresh clothing”, plus “eating breakfast”  with the Outdraw-Cue “full belly.”

The goal is actualized after 3 other attendings in between, thus the factor Success-Proximity  becomes: SuPr = -0.5

0.85+(−0.0225)=0.8275

The Cue-Power has dropped to 82.75%

Example 5)

A fourth Withdraw-MAC is inserted (“no success” the second time in a row). The smoker from the example above decides to insert the Withdraw-MACs “doing the dishes”, then “go for a run & take a shower & put on fresh clothing”, plus “eating breakfast”, plus “go to work” with the Outdraw-Cue “arrive at work.”

The goal is actualized after 4 other attendings in between, thus the factor Success-Proximity  becomes: SuPr = -1.0

0.85+(−0.045) =0.805

The Cue-Power has dropped to 80.5%.

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