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| Recent Investigations of Response Effort in Relation to: Delay Discounting, Response Difficulty, and Extinction and Resurgence |
| Saturday, May 24, 2025 |
| 5:00 PM–5:50 PM |
| Convention Center, Street Level, 151 AB |
| Area: EAB; Domain: Basic Research |
| Chair: Carson Steven Yahrmarkt (West Virginia University) |
| Abstract: This symposium presents three programs of research aimed at furthering our understanding of response effort. The first presentation evaluates delay discounting of effort in pigeons. With an adjusting-delay procedure, pigeons chose between two alternatives that required either completion of a delayed small ratio or an immediate large ratio. The second presentation evaluates response difficulty in a human-operant task. Participants responded on fixed-ratio and fixed-interval schedules by clicking on moving circles. The circles were programmed to move at different rates across phases. The third presentation evaluates extinction and resurgence in a human foraging task. Participants played a video game in which they pressed a mouse button to create a search orb to discover ghosts. The rate at which participants could move the search orb was varied across conditions. The purpose of these talks is to share new data related to the effects of effort requirements on behavior and to introduce some novel methods for studying effort. |
| Instruction Level: Intermediate |
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| Delay Discounting of Effort: Pigeons Chose Between Large Immediate and Small Delayed Fixed-Ratio Schedules of Reinforcement |
| CARSON STEVEN YAHRMARKT (West Virginia University), Michael Perone (West Virginia University) |
| Abstract: Pigeons chose between two fixed-ratio (FR) schedules of reinforcement: a large FR presented immediately, and a small FR presented after a delay. Each session consisted of 12 blocks of 4 trials. Each block had 2 forced choice trials followed by 2 free choice trials. Across trials, an adjusting-delay procedure was used to increase or decrease the delay to the small FR to estimate an indifference point (the delay at which the two alternatives were chosen equally often). Across the initial conditions the small FR requirement was 10 and the large FR was raised from 25 up to 150. The adjusting delay to the small FR increased as the large FR was raised; pigeons tolerated longer delays to the small FR. In some conditions, pigeons chose to complete the small FR with delays that increased the time to food far beyond the time it took to complete the large FR. Results, theoretical implications, and future directions will be discussed. |
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| The Interaction of Effort and Reinforcement Schedules on Response Rates |
| HALEH AMANIEH (West Virginia University), MaryKate Behan (Loyola University Maryland; West Virginia University), Kathryn M. Kestner (West Virginia University) |
| Abstract: Changes in response effort have generally been shown to affect response rates such that higher-effort responses tend to result in lower criterion response rates. As research continues to investigate effort conceptually and empirically, questions remain as to the underlying mechanisms of effort manipulations that control behavior. One such mechanism may be the changes in obtained reinforcement rate or reinforcement contiguity to the target response as a function of changes in effort. To investigate this potential relation, the present experiments used a human-operant computer task procedure with five college students. In Experiment 1, clicks on moving circles on a computer screen resulted in points on a fixed-ratio (FR) 10 schedule across three phases in which the speed of the moving circle was either slow (Easy), moderate (Intermediate), or fast (Difficult). In the subsequent phase, the obtained reinforcement rate was yoked to a fixed-interval (FI) schedule across the three levels of effort. In Experiment 2, reinforcer-to-response ratios obtained on an FR 10 or FI 5 s schedule across three levels of effort were yoked to an FR schedule with an Easy effort setting. The effects of these various reinforcement schedules on criterion and subcriterion response rates were compared. |
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| Examining the Role of Response Effort in Extinction and Resurgence in a Human Foraging Task |
| JONATHAN W. PINKSTON (University of Kansas) |
| Abstract: Response effort is an important concept in the psychology of motivation but remains poorly understood. Much of the literature on effort with humans has examined discrete responses, which may not capture the effects of continuous exertion. The present study developed a video-game based “foraging” simulation to study continuous responding. Nine participants played a game where they searched for ghosts. Participants searched by pressing a mouse button to create a search orb, which they were told would reveal and dispel hidden ghosts. Ghosts could be discovered on average every 15-s as the participant actively moved the orb across the screen. In different conditions, the velocity of the mouse movement was altered by adjusting the mouse speed. So, sometimes participants could search quickly and at other times slowly. Over three components, the location of the screen that contained ghosts moved. The findings showed that participants predominantly allocated behavior to areas where ghosts could be found. During extinction conditions, foraging declined for all participants, but the rate of decline was not related to velocity. Resurgence of foraging in areas that previously contained ghosts also occurred, but also was unrelated to velocity. |
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