Rewarding performance feedback alters reported time of action

Past studies have shown that the perceived time of actions is retrospectively influenced by post-action events. The current study examined whether rewarding performance feedback (even when false) altered the reported time of action. In Experiment 1, participants performed a speeded button press task and received monetary reward for a presumed “fast,” or a monetary punishment for a presumed “slow” response. Rewarded trials resulted in the false perception that the response action occurred earlier than punished trials. In Experiments 2 and 3, the need for a speeded response and reward were independently manipulated in order to decouple the cognitive and reward components in the feedback signal. When tested independently, neither variable affected the judged time of action. We conclude that meaningful feedback (fast or slow) is only used when made salient by reward, to modulate the judged time of an action.     

Rewarding context accelerates implicit guidance in visual search

It is well known that observers can implicitly learn the spatial context of complex visual searches, such that future searches through repeated contexts are completed faster than those through novel contexts, even though observers remain at chance at discriminating repeated from new contexts. This contextual-cueing effect arises quickly (within less than five exposures) and asymptotes within 30 exposures to repeated contexts. In spite of being a robust effect (its magnitude is over 100 ms at the asymptotic level), the effect is implicit: Participants are usually at chance at discriminating old from new contexts at the end of an experiment, in spite of having seen each repeated context more than 30 times throughout a 50-min experiment. Here, we demonstrate that the speed at which the contextual-cueing effect arises can be modulated by external rewards associated with the search contexts (not with the performance itself). Following each visual search trial (and irrespective of a participant’s search speed on the trial), we provided a reward, a penalty, or no feedback to the participant. Crucially, the type of feedback obtained was associated with the specific contexts, such that some repeated contexts were always associated with reward, and others were always associated with penalties. Implicit learning occurred fastest for contexts associated with positive feedback, though penalizing contexts also showed a learning benefit. Consistent feedback also produced faster learning than did variable feedback, though unexpected penalties produced the largest immediate effects on search performance.     

Hatred in Group Therapy: A Rewarding Challenge

Hatred is a powerful affective experience that can be disruptive to the work of a therapy group, yet it may also enhance a member's capacity to deal with strong affects. This paper explores a particular aspect of hatred, the hate directed at one member of a cotherapy team. An effort is made to explore the experience from an intersubjective and motivational systems perspective, focusing primarily on the therapist and one patient. The impact of the cotherapy relationship is also considered, as well as the whole group's capacity to contain and work with this powerful affective response. The way that the group managed this explosive situation speaks to the power of group therapy in healing and transforming its members.     

Rewarding elementary schoolchildren for their use of safety belts

This study reports on the application of reward procedures to elementary schoolchildren to increase their use of seat belts en route to two schools. Following strict rules for assessing buckle-up compliance, all passengers in a car had to be safely secured in order for the schoolchildren to receive rewards. Compliant children received paper slips as they arrived at schools, which were redeemable for stickers, bumper stickers, and coloring books. The slips were also used in weekly drawings for pizza dinners. The mean compliance rate for School 1 was 4.3% during baseline, 66.2% for the reward phase across 4 weeks, 60% for return to baseline, 17.2% for Follow-Up 1, and 8.5% for Follow-Up 2. For School 2, the mean percentage was 5.3% at baseline, 69.8% for the reward phase, 68.5% for return to baseline, 40.1% for Follow-Up 1, and 20% for Follow-Up 2. These results indicate that rewarding the schoolchildren increased their own seat-belt use as well as that of their adult drivers and other passengers. Decreases in usage were observed after the rewards were removed.     

Rewarding leadership and fair procedures as determinants of self-esteem

In the present research, the authors examined the effect of procedural fairness and rewarding leadership style on an important variable for employees: self-esteem. The authors predicted that procedural fairness would positively influence people's reported self-esteem if the leader adopted a style of rewarding behavior for a job well done. Results from a scenario experiment, a laboratory experiment, and an organizational survey indeed show that procedural fairness and rewarding leadership style interacted to influence followers' self-esteem, such that the positive relationship between procedural fairness and self-esteem was more pronounced when the leadership style was high in rewarding behavior. Implications in terms of integrating the leadership and procedural fairness literature are discussed.     

The effort heuristic

The research presented here suggests that effort is used as a heuristic for quality. Participants rating a poem (Experiment 1), a painting (Experiment 2), or a suit of armor (Experiment 3) provided higher ratings of quality, value, and liking for the work the more time and effort they thought it took to produce. Experiment 3 showed that the use of the effort heuristic, as with all heuristics, is moderated by ambiguity: Participants were more influenced by effort when the quality of the object being evaluated was difficult to ascertain. Discussion centers on the implications of the effort heuristic for everyday judgment and decision-making.     

Rewarding psychiatric aides for the behavioral improvement of assigned patients

Different ways of modifying the aide-patient relationship to promote improvement in psychiatric patients were investigated. Psychiatric aides were given information about the behavior of assigned patients, cash awards based on the improvement of assigned patients, and different kinds of supervision by the psychology staff; the effects of these variables on a large number of psychiatrically relevant behaviors were measured. Appropriate behavior of patients increased when the aides were given quantitative information about the improvement of assigned patients. Cash awards for aides, which were not contingent on the behavior of patients had little effect, while cash awards contingent on the behavior of assigned patients were associated with more appropriate behavior. Direct supervision of aide-patient interactions was associated with an increase in appropriate behavior, while required consultation for the aides about assigned patients was not. Behavior of patients deteriorated when the program was terminated.     

Rewarding seniority: exploring cultural and organizational predictors of seniority allocations

The author investigated how organizations in the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and Germany use seniority in their decisions about rewarding employees. The author asked employees from several organizations to indicate how often their organizations use seniority when making decisions about pay raises, promotions, and dismissals. Results indicated that organizations with egalitarian cultures, economically successful organizations, and public-sector organizations use seniority more often in such decisions. Furthermore, uncertainty avoidance predicted greater use of seniority. The findings are discussed in light of the potential of seniority to maintain and control conflict inherent in open systems and the aging workforce in Western societies.     

Response effort and resurgence

This study provides an initial translational examination of response effort and resurgence. Eleven typically developing adults and five adolescents with autism served as participants across two experiments. Participants received points for touching moving stimuli on a computer screen. The resurgence evaluation consisted of three phases: establishment wherein R1 was reinforced, elimination wherein R1 was placed on extinction while R2 was reinforced, and extinction wherein R1 and R2 no longer resulted in reinforcement. Rate of R1 during extinction was compared across three conditions: intermediate, easy, and difficult. Disparity in effort was created by manipulations of the size and speed of objects that moved about on a computer screen. In Experiment 2, control stimuli were added to the experimental arrangement. Across the two experiments, the magnitude of resurgence was greater when R1 was easy. In Experiment 2, both R1 and control responding were greater in the extinction phase than in the elimination phase in all conditions with all participants. The present study supports the hypothesis that response effort affects resurgence and that less effortful responses are likely to recur with greater magnitude under conditions that produce resurgence than are their more effortful counterparts.     

Transfer of effort across behaviors

A series of experiments investigated the effects of required force and number of responses per reinforcer upon the subsequent performance of a second behavior. In the first experiment, a group of rats required to complete five round trips in an alley per food pellet subsequently bar-pressed for food at a greater rate than a group rewarded for each round trip or a control group that did not receive the alley experience. In the second experiment, a group required to apply a 70-g bar-press force subsequently shuttled for food at a greater rate than a group required merely to touch the lever or a control group that did not undergo the lever-press manipulation. The third experiment found that the force effect persisted across all five test sessions and was attributable to differences both in response speed and interresponse time. The fourth experiment found that both the necessary bar-press force and number of bar presses per reward affected subsequent shuttling in extinction. Two alternative interpretations of these results were compared: (a) the degree of accustomed effort per reinforcer becomes a generalized component of instrumental behavior or (b) high effort increases the habituation frustration-produced disruptive responses.     

Making life easier with effort: Basic findings and applied research on response effort

Early basic research showed that increases in required response effort (or force) produced effects that resembled those produced by punishment. A recent study by Alling and Poling determined some subtle differences between the two behavior-change strategies, but also confirmed that increasing required effort is an effective response-reduction procedure with enduring effects. In this paper we summarize basic research on response effort and explore the role of effort in diverse applied areas including deceleration of aberrant behavior, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oral habits, health care appointment keeping, littering, indexes of functional disability, and problem solving. We conclude that renewed interest in response effort as an independent variable is justified because of its potent effects and because the political constraints imposed on punishment- and reinforcement-based procedures have yet to be imposed on procedures that entail manipulations of response effort.     

Maintenance-feeding effort affects instrumental performance

The effort required of rats to obtain food, employing standard maintenance-feeding procedures, can affect the effort subsequently expended in an instrumental-learning task. Rats received 43 food-rewarded runway trials followed by access to food (a) on the home-cage floor, or (b) from a hopper attached to the home-cage's wiremesh front wall. Hopper feeding involved the greater effort since the rats had to gnaw the food pellets through the wire mesh. Following 9 or 27 days of maintenance feeding, the rats were returned to the runway for one rewarded trial and 16 extinction trials. The hopper-fed rats ran faster than floor-fed rats on the rewarded test trial. In extinction, long-term maintenance feeding produced faster subsequent running times by the hopper-fed rats than the floor-fed rats. Short-term maintenance feeding, on the other hand, produced slower running times by the hopper-fed rats than the floor-fed rats. The results are consistent with previous findings of transfer of effort across behaviours and suggest that the effort required for reinforcement in the maintenance environment can systematically influence the effectiveness of various experimental treatments.     

Cognitive effort during note taking

Note taking is a complex activity that requires comprehension and selection of information and written production processes. Here we review the functions, abbreviation procedures, strategies, and working memory constraints of note taking with the aim of improving theoretical and practical understanding of the activity. The time urgency of selecting key points and recording them while comprehending new information at the same time places significant demands on the central executive and other components of working memory. Dual‐ and triple‐task procedures allow the measurement of the momentary cognitive effort or executive attention allocated to note taking. Comparative data show that note taking demands more effort than reading or learning. However, it requires less effort than the creative written composition of an original text. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Meaningful and Psychologically Rewarding Occupations: Characteristics and Implications for Occupational Therapy Practice

The differences between meaningful and psychologically rewarding occupations were investigated. Fifty-two individuals from the United States and South Africa participated in the research, which was conducted using the Experience Sampling Method. Participants were cued at random, five times per day for 7?days. Each time when cued, they documented the types of occupations in which they were participating, associated mood, and perceived meaning of the occupations. Meaningful and psychologically rewarding occupations were similar: Both were physically stimulating and connected participants with other people. There were differences between U.S. and South African participants regarding perceived meaning of occupations and associated mood.