Does effort play a role in the effect of response requirements on delayed matching to sample?
Extra responses during the sample give the learner more time to look, and that extra looking—not the effort—boosts matching accuracy.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with pigeons in a matching-to-sample task.
Birds had to peck a sample color, wait, then pick the same color from two choices.
Some trials made the bird peck many times during the sample. Other trials made the bird peck many times before the sample appeared.
The goal was to see if extra effort, or just longer looking, helped the birds match correctly.
What they found
More pecks during the sample raised accuracy. More pecks before the sample did nothing.
The authors say the boost came from longer exposure to the sample, not from the hard work itself.
How this fits with other research
Morgan (1988) and Hawley et al. (2004) later got the same jump in accuracy with kids, not birds. They used hand signs or built the sample themselves instead of extra pecks. All three studies show: give the learner more time with the sample and matching gets better.
Jason et al. (1985) worked with older and younger men. They added a short beep before choices and set a quick answer window. Their humans also matched faster and better, even with tricky samples. Again, timing and attention tricks help across species.
No true clash exists here. Odom et al. (1986) tested effort inside the sample window. The later papers tested ways to lengthen or focus that window. Same lever, different handles.
Why it matters
When you run matching games with learners who struggle, make them stay with the sample a little longer. You can ask for five claps, have them trace the card, or simply wait three extra seconds before you hide it. The extra seconds, not the sweat, lock the picture into memory.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The possible role of "effort" in the accuracy of pigeons' performance on a delayed matching-to-sample procedure was investigated by examining the effects of response requirements that accompanied a trial-initiating stimulus and that accompanied a sample stimulus. In the first experiment, the effect of varying the size of a fixed-ratio requirement for responses during an initiating stimulus was compared to that of varying a similar requirement for responses during the sample stimulus. Accuracy increased reliably with increases in the ratio scheduled during the sample stimulus, but was not significantly affected by increases in the ratio scheduled on the key during the initiating stimulus. In another phase of Experiment 1, sample duration was held constant while the ratio requirement was varied during the initiating stimulus. Again, accuracy of matching to sample was not significantly affected by the size of the ratio scheduled during the initiating stimulus. Experiment 2 provided a systematic replication of these results in another group of pigeons and included a more detailed analysis of responding. These results support the view that increases in sample-response requirement facilitate accuracy of delayed matching by increasing the durations of exposure to the sample stimuli, and do not support a role of effort in the sample-response effect. In Experiment 3, the facilitative effect of responses on the sample but not of those on the initiating stimulus was replicated using a simultaneous matching-to-sample procedure. This finding provides further evidence against an interpretation of response-requirement effects that appeals to effort; the finding also suggests that sample exposure might affect initial discrimination of the sample rather than remembering the sample.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1986 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1986.45-19