Brief interventions based on the principles of motivational
interviewing have demonstrated comparable efficacy to longer-term
cognitive behavioral therapies for reducing substance abuse (Burke
et al., 2003), but specific techniques used within motivational
interviewing have rarely been tested experimentally. One notable exception
is an fMRI study that found diminished neural responses to alcohol
cues following self-generated change talk in alcohol dependent
subjects, suggesting that motivational interviewing can promote the inhibition
of maladaptive reward responses (Feldstein Ewing et al., 2011).
Rather than diminishing the value of a maladaptive behavior, we aimed
to use the principles of motivational interviewing to enhance motivation
and performance on our learning task, by encouraging the participants
to generate statements about the value of the learning task.