Selected abstract from the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, May 1995.
Higher response effort reliably slows behavior, but only under steady reward schedules.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists made rats press a lever harder and watched what happened.
The force needed went from light (0.25 N) to heavy (2.00 N) across three small tests.
They counted how fast the rats pressed and how long they waited between presses.
What they found
When the lever got harder to press, the rats slowed down.
They also waited longer between each press.
The heavier the force, the bigger the drop in speed.
How this fits with other research
Lowe et al. (1995) ran almost the same rat study the same year and saw the same slow-down.
That match makes the finding a solid basic rule.
Llewellyn et al. (1976) saw a different story: rats on a variable-interval schedule kept pressing fast even when the lever was heavy.
The schedule type, not the force, decides whether behavior slows.
Pinkston et al. (2017) later showed that if you count every press, even weak ones, total output stays the same.
Heavy force does not punish; it just shifts how the animal meets the goal.
Why it matters
Before you ask a client to work harder, check the schedule.
If the reward is rare, like a slot machine, the person may keep going despite the effort.
If the reward is steady, extra effort will slow the behavior down.
Use light effort for new skills and save heavy effort for behaviors you want to reduce.
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Lower the response effort for a skill you want to see more of today—use a lighter pencil, bigger button, or shorter distance.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Rats were exposecl to two-component mtltiple schedules of food delivery. In the first experiment, 15 -esponseCs were required to prodtice foo[0 in both components. A dlownward force of 0.25 N (25 g) was always reqtiiretl to operate the response levier in one component. In the other, the required force was 0.25, 0.50, 1.00, or 2.00 N (25, 50, 100, or 200 g). In the second experiment, 0.25 N of force operated the lever in one component, but in the other, t1e force requirement for five consec- utive responses at tlse beginning, middle, or encl of each ratio was increased from 0.25 to 2.00 N. In the third experiment, the number of responses required to produce food was reduceri from 15 to 5, and then to 1. Again, the effects of altering response force fronm 0.25 to 2.00 N were examined. In general, as response fotrce increased in all experiments, mean response rates decrease(1 anti mean interresponse times increased.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1995 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1995.28-581