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Effort Effect: An Artifact of Effort-Produced Partial Responses?
Abstract
It was previously found (Armus, 1986, 1988, 1990) that greater response effort requirements led to a greater percentage of short (< 1 s) interresponse times (IRTs). The explanation previously proposed (Armus, 1986) was based on the assumption that more effortful responses produced more salient response-produced feedback stimuli, and that these became more strongly conditioned to the lever pressing response than in the case of less effortful presses and less salient feedback stimuli. A series of four experiments focused on the possibility this relationship between effort and the percentage of short IRTs might have been an artifact of the effective reinforcement schedule resulting from higher response effort. Experiment 1 examined the percentage of short IRTs under two schedules of reinforcement: CRF and VR-4. Experiment 2 used the same basic procedure as Experiment 1, except that there was a delay period of 1 second after each reinforcement, in which presses were not counted towards the schedule. In Experiment 3, the percentage of short IRTs which occurred only after a reinforced press under CRF and VR-4 schedules was examined, and in Experiment 4, partial responses were recorded under two different effort levels-50 g (high effort) and 7 g (low effort). The results of these experiments suggest that it is possible that the "effort effect" found by Armus was indeed an artifact of what was functionally a partial reinforcement schedule resulting from higher effort conditions.
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Two experiments tested the applicability to human beings of findings with animals that the number of performances required for the reinforcement of one behavior affects the subsequent effort expended in other instrumental behaviors. In Exp I, 12 adult depressed psychiatric patients worked on a sorting task for the approval of a staff psychologist. The time spent and the work completed were increased by prior approval from a ward attendant for each completion of several custodial tasks, as compared to the attendant's approval for each completion of a single task or a no-pretreatment control condition. In Exp II, 11 preadolescent learning-disabled students who were required to read and spell correctly a greater number of words per reward token later spent more time and completed more work for reward tokens in mathematics and handwriting. Results suggest that individual differences in general persistence may arise, in part, from an accumulation of effort training in the natural environment. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Higher levels of required response effort in an operant task resulted in a greater relative frequency of short (less than 1 sec) interresponse times for both continuous reinforcement and fixed-ratio 5 (FR-5) groups, with the effect being accentuated for the FR-5 condition.
Higher levels of required response effort in an operant task resulted in a greater absolute and relative frequency of short (less than 1 sec) interresponse times.
96 female undergraduates were given a training task involving easy or difficult anagrams, mathematics problems, perceptual identifications, or a combination of all 3 problems. To test for the generalization of effort across tasks, all Ss were next asked to write a short essay. The use of a single task throughout training failed to produce an effect of required effort, whereas the combination of all 3 training tasks yielded a greater subsequent essay length and quality by high- than low-effort Ss. Results support the view that increasing the variety of training tasks at high or low required effort contributes to the student's abstraction of a general rule of principle concerning the degree of effort required for successful academic performance. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Extensive research with animals and humans indicates that rewarded effort contributes to durable individual differences in industriousness. It is proposed that reinforcement for increased physical or cognitive performance, or for the toleration of aversive stimulation, conditions rewards value to the sensation of high effort and thereby reduces effort's aversiveness. The conditioning of secondary reward value to the sensation of effort provides a dynamic mechanism by which reinforced high performance generalizes across behaviors. Applications to self-control, moral development, and education are described.
This study investigated the effect of response effort on the percentage of short interresponse times under constant and varied effort conditions. After training on a lever-pressing task, rats were subjected to either a constant or a varied 10-g or 55-g response force (effort) requirement. The percentage of short interresponse times (under 1 sec.) was recorded in both acquisition and extinction phases of testing. The findings showed no effect of effort on the occurrence of short interresponse times during acquisition. However, there was a significant effort effect in extinction for the varied effort group, the higher force requirement resulting in a greater percentage of short interresponse times.
Rats barpressed for food on a variable-interval schedule and then received food in a runway for one of three degrees of effort.
Finally, all animals again barpressed for food. Requiring five runway shuttles per food pellet produced a greater subsequent
rate of barpressing than reward for each shuttle, which, in turn, yielded more barpressing than free food. A follow-up study
showed the five-shuttle treatment to produce more subsequent barpressing than a control condition which omitted any runway
treatment. Another experiment indicated that the higher rate of barpressing following the five-shuttle treatment was not due
to greater conditioned general activity, since the five-shuttle treatment failed to increase the number of grid crossings
to the cue of food presentation and produced no more unconditioned barpressing than following free food in the runway. Two
possible interpretations of the results were compared: (1) The degree of accustomed effort per reinforcer becomes a generalized
component of instrumental behavior, (2) high effort increases the habituation of frustration-produced disruptive responses.
A series of experiments investigated the effects of required force and number of responses per reinforcer upon the subsequent performance of a second behavior. In the first experiment, a group of rats required to complete five round trips in an alley per food pellet subsequently bar-pressed for food at a greater rate than a group rewarded for each round trip or a control group that did not receive the alley experience. In the second experiment, a group required to apply a 70-g bar-press force subsequently shuttled for food at a greater rate than a group required merely to touch the lever or a control group that did not undergo the lever-press manipulation. The third experiment found that the force effect persisted across all five test sessions and was attributable to differences both in response speed and interresponse time. The fourth experiment found that both the necessary bar-press force and number of bar presses per reward affected subsequent shuttling in extinction. Two alternative interpretations of these results were compared: (a) the degree of accustomed effort per reinforcer becomes a generalized component of instrumental behavior or (b) high effort increases the habituation frustration-produced disruptive responses.
The expectation that greater response effort by rats on an operant task would lead to a higher percentage of rapid repetitions was not supported for lever release although lever depression was sensitive to effort.