Effects of effort and difficulty on human preference for a stimulus: Investigation of the within-trial contrast

Tsukamoto, Masashi; Kohara, Kenichiro; Takeuchi, Kohji

doi:10.3758/s13420-016-0248-8

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Pigeons responded more to an alternative after a high investment (i.e., higher rate of pecking) than a low investment (i.e., lower rate of pecking). Similar results have been obtained with humans (e.g., Tsukamoto, Kohara & Takeuchi, ). These findings predict that the reinforcement value of the standard alternative should be higher in the HR than the LR phases.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Response rate correlates with indifference points in a delay‐discounting procedure

García-Leal

Barrón

Camarena-Pérez

et al. 2019

J Exper Analysis Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To study how effort affects reward value, we replicated Fortes, Vasconcelos and Machado's (2015) study using an adjusting‐delay task. Nine pigeons chose between a standard alternative that gave access to 4 s of food, after a 10 s delay, and an adjusting‐delay alternative that gave access to 12 s of food after a delay that changed dynamically with the pigeons' choices, decreasing when they preferred the standard alternative, and increasing when they preferred the adjusting alternative. The delay value at which preference stabilized defined the indifference point, a measure of reward value. To manipulate effort across phases, we varied the response rate required during the delay of the standard alternative. Results showed that a) the indifference point increased in the higher‐response‐rate phases, suggesting that reward value decreased with effort, and b) in the higher‐response‐rate phases, response rate in the standard alternative was linearly related to the indifference point. We advance several conceptions of how effort may change perceived delay or amount and thereby affect reward value.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Response rate correlates with indifference points in a delay‐discounting procedure

García-Leal

Barrón

Camarena-Pérez

et al. 2019

J Exper Analysis Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The within-contrast effort effect has been replicated in starlings (Kacelnik & Marsh, 2002) and humans (Klein, Bhatt, & Zentall, 2005; Tsukamoto & Kohara, 2017; Tsukamoto, Kohara, & Takeuchi, 2017) using comparable tasks. Conceptually, the within-trial contrast effect has also been demonstrated when the contrast involved a stimulus signaling a transition from a long delay (e.g., Digian, Friedrich, & Zentall, 2004) or a transition to food when the organism was in a relatively more extreme food deprived state (e.g., Marsh, Schuck-Paim, & Kacelnik, 2004).…”

Section: Effort and Self-controlmentioning

confidence: 87%

Cognitive and behavioral training interventions to promote self-control.

Smith¹,

Panfil²,

Bailey³

et al. 2019

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This review article discusses various cognitive and behavioral interventions that have been developed with the goal of promoting self-controlled responding. Self-control can exert a significant impact on human health and impulsive behaviors are associated with a wide range of diseases and disorders, leading to the suggestion that impulsivity is a trans-disease process. The self-control interventions include effort exposure, reward discrimination, reward bundling, interval schedules of reinforcement, impulse control training, and mindfulness training. Most of the interventions have been consistently shown to increase self-control, except for mindfulness training. Some of the successful interventions are long-lasting, whereas others may be transient. Most interventions are domain-specific, targeting specific cognitive and behavioral processes that relate to self-control rather than targeting overall self-control. For example, effort exposure appears to primarily increase effort tolerance, which in turn can improve self-control. Similarly, interval schedules primarily target interval timing, which promotes self-controlled responses. A diagram outlining a proposed set of intervention effects on self-control is introduced to motivate further research in this area. The diagram suggests that the individual target processes of the interventions may potentially summate to produce general self-control, or perhaps even produce synergistic effects. In addition, it is suggested that developing a self-control profile may be advantageous for aligning specific interventions to mitigate specific deficits. Overall, the results indicate that interventions are a promising avenue for promoting self-control and may help to contribute to changing health outcomes associated with a wide variety of diseases and disorders.

show abstract

“…In contrast, when an action is evaluated retrospectively, effort tends to inflate the value of a realised reward (Alessandri et al, 2008, Wang et al, 2017, Aronson and Mills, 1959. For example, animals tend to prefer outcomes that have previously been associated with more effortful behaviour (Singer et al, 2007, Tsukamoto et al, 2017, Klein et al, 2005. Returning to our earlier example, these frameworks predict that the views atop the mountain would be more rewarding if we chose to climb to the peak rather than take the chairlift.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Effort Reinforces Learning

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Humans routinely learn the value of actions by updating their expectations based on past outcomesa process driven by reward prediction errors (RPEs). Importantly, however, implementing a course of action also requires the investment of effort. Recent work has revealed a close link between the neural signals involved in effort exertion and those underpinning reward-based learning, but the behavioural relationship between these two functions remains unclear. Across two experiments, we tested healthy participants (N=140) on a reinforcement learning task in which they registered their responses by applying physical force to a pair of hand-held dynamometers. We examined the effect of effort on learning by systematically manipulating the amount of force required to register a response during the task. Our key finding, replicated across both experiments, was that greater effort increased learning rates following positive outcomes and decreased them following negative outcomes, which corresponded to a differential effect of effort in boosting positive RPEs and blunting negative RPEs. Interestingly, this effect was most pronounced in individuals who were more averse to effort in the first place, raising the possibility that the investment of effort may have an adaptive effect on learning in those less motivated to exert it. By integrating principles of reinforcement learning with neuroeconomic approaches to valuebased decision making, we show that the very act of investing effort modulates one's capacity to learn, and demonstrate how these functions may operate within a common computational framework.3 Significance StatementRecent work suggests that learning and effort may share common neurophysiological substrates. This raises the possibility that the very act of investing effort influences learning.Here, we tested whether effort modulates teaching signals in a reinforcement learning paradigm. Our results showed that effort resulted in more efficient learning from positive outcomes and less efficient learning from negative outcomes. Interestingly, this effect varied across individuals, and was more pronounced in those who were more averse to investing effort in the first place. These data highlight the importance of motivational factors in a common framework of reward-based learning, which integrates the computational principles of reinforcement learning with those of value-based decision-making.

show abstract

Effects of effort and difficulty on human preference for a stimulus: Investigation of the within-trial contrast

Cited by 7 publications

References 27 publications

Response rate correlates with indifference points in a delay‐discounting procedure

Response rate correlates with indifference points in a delay‐discounting procedure

Cognitive and behavioral training interventions to promote self-control.

Effort Reinforces Learning

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About