Abstract
Usually, discrimination problems are scored by counting correct responses or errors, and the effects of experimental variations on discriminative behavior, by comparing these measures. However, for purposes of analysis at least, we recognize that behavior in a discrimination problem involves two response tendencies, those to the positive and negative stimuli. When a subject increases his percentage of correct choices, this could be due to an increased tendency to respond to the positive stimulus and/or a decrease in the tendency towards the negative stimulus. In differential conditioning, S does not make a choice. Two stimuli are alternately presented, and some measurable aspect of a uniform response is taken as an index of the strength of the tendency to respond to each. Thus, if one is reinforced and the other is not, we may obtain independent, trial-by-trial measures of changes in response tendencies to a positive and to a negative stimulus. The plausible assumption that these measures are related to the choice behavior of the simultaneous discrimination problem has received some support in animal research, in special procedures where these two paradigms are mixed (4)The present study deals with the effects of effort on children's performance on a differential conditioning problem. For one group (Heavy, H), responding required a force of two-thirds of a maximum effort previously
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