Task difficulty, cardiovascular response, and the magnitude of goal valence

Sixty-four young women expected to perform an easy, moderately difficult, or extremely difficult memory task with the opportunity to earn a small incentive for good performance. Cardiovascular (heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure) and subjective measures were taken immediately prior to task performance. Both systolic blood pressure (SBP) responses and ratings of goal attractiveness were nonmonotonically related to expected task difficulty, with the most pronounced SBP elevations and highest goal attractiveness in the moderately difficult task condition. Product-moment correlations among cardiovascular response measures revealed a strong positive association between systolic and diastolic pressure (but not heart rate) change in the easy condition, positive relationships among all measures in the moderately difficult condition, and no significant correlations in the extremely difficult condition. Subjective measures of arousal were not affected by the task difficulty manipulation. Principal findings are discussed in terms of a theoretical model proposed by Brehm (1979) that states that motivation varies as a nonmonotonic function of the difficulty of goal attainment. Intercorrelations among cardiovascular response variables are considered in terms of their possible indication of the mechanisms underlying blood pressure changes associated with variations in motivation.     

Mood state,task demand,and effort-related cardiovascular response

Drawing on the mood-behaviour model (Gendolla, 2000), two studies investigated informational effects of mood on effort-related cardiovascular response. Experiment 1 manipulated mood state (positive, negative) and task difficulty (easy, difficult, extremely difficult). Effects on cardiovascular reactivity were as expected: On the easy level, reactivity was weak in a positive mood, but strong in a negative mood; on the difficult level, reactivity was strong in a positive mood, but weak in a negative mood; on the extremely difficulty level mood had no effect. Experiment 2 manipulated mood only. As predicted, subjective demand and cardiovascular response were both higher in a negative mood than in a positive mood and the mood effect on cardiovascular response diminished after statistically controlling for the demand appraisals. Neither study revealed any mood effects on cardiovascular response during the mood inductions.     

Cardiovascular Responses to Threat: Effects of the Difficulty and Availability of a Cognitive Avoidant Task

Measures of heart rate (HR), systolic blood pressure (SBP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were taken during an interval immediately preceding a period in which male subjects were to perform an easy or difficult memory task to avoid a noxious noise, or simply wait to receive the noise. As predicted, anticipatory elevations in SBP and HR were relatively higher in the difficult avoidance condition than in the easy and impossible avoidance conditions. In contrast, anticipatory DBP change-scores decreased linearly from easy to difficult to impossible avoidance conditions. Results are discussed in terms of a recent motivational theory suggesting that energy mobilization in the face of threat should be a function of what can, will, and must be done to cope.     

Ego-involvement and the difficulty law of motivation: effects on performance-related cardiovascular response

Two experiments found that effort-related cardiovascular reactivity under ego-involvement follows the principles of motivational intensity theory. Experiment 1 manipulated ego-involvement and the difficulty of a memory task. Under high ego-involvement, cardiovascular reactivity during task performance increased with fixed task difficulty; an unfixed performance standard elicited the same high reactivity as a fixed high standard. Experiment 2 manipulated ego-involvement and administered a memory task with unfixed versus extremely high performance standards. High ego-involvement increased cardiovascular reactivity only when the performance standard was unfixed but not when success was obviously impossible. Both studies found associations between cardiovascular reactivity and achievement and controlled for emotional states. The findings clarify previous research and theorizing about ego-involvement and motivation.     

Anagram solving: Does effort have an effect?

The purpose of these studies was to explore the role of effort in remembering anagrams and their solutions. In Experiment 1, we compared the effects on memory of copying words, typing them as solutions for easy anagrams, or typing them as solutions for difficult anagrams. Solving anagrams involved more effort than did simply typing words, as indexed by response time. However, this effort facilitated recall for solutions to easy anagrams but not for solutions to difficult anagrams. In Experiment 2, we compared memory for anagrams and their solutions using a frequency-judgment task. Memory for solutions was better than memory for anagrams, and this difference was not affected by anagram difficulty. The results of these studies have implications for our understanding of the role of effort in remembering.     

Effects of age and a divided attention task presented during encoding and retrieval on memory

The present studies were designed to examine age differences in memory when attention was divided during encoding, retrieval, or at both times. In Experiment 1, Ss studied categorized words while performing a number-monitoring task during encoding, retrieval, or at both times. Older Ss' free recall and clustering performance declined more than that of young Ss when attention was divided at encoding, but there was no similar age interaction when divided attention occurred at retrieval. In Experiment 2, the task demands at retrieval were increased by using a fast-paced, cued-recall task. The results remained unchanged from Experiment 1. Again, an age interaction occurred with divided attention at encoding but not at retrieval. These results were unexpected, given the emphasis in the memory-aging literature on increased difficulty of retrieval by older adults. The findings pose difficulties for limited processing resource views of age differences in memory.     

Informational mood impact on effort-related cardiovascular response: the diagnostic value of mood counts

Drawing on the mood-behavior model (G. H. E. Gendolla, 2000), 2 experiments examined moods' informational impact on effort-related cardiovascular response. After being induced into positive versus negative moods, participants performed a memory task (Experiment 1) or a letter-cancellation task (Experiment 2). Half the participants received a cue that their mood could have been manipulated. As expected, both studies found stronger reactivity of systolic blood pressure in a negative mood than in a positive mood when no cue was provided. This effect diminished in the cue conditions. Additionally, achievement corresponded to systolic blood pressure reactivity (Experiment 1), the cue manipulation had no effect on mood, and mood had a congruency effect on subjective task difficulty in the no-cue conditions (Experiment 2).     

Age and forgetfulness: perceivers' impressions of targets' capability.

In a person perception paradigm, 72 young and 72 old adult Ss listened to tape recordings of a nonforgetful, moderately forgetful, or highly forgetful female target person being interviewed for a volunteer job. Ss then rated their opinion of the target's memory and how likely they would be to assign the target to easy and difficult tasks. Overall, Ss gave higher memory opinion ratings to old than to young targets. As expected, they were more likely to assign tasks to nonforgetful than to forgetful targets. However, they were more egalitarian than was hypothesized in their task assignment ratings for forgetful young versus forgetful old targets.     

Reward Influence on the Heart: Cardiovascular Response as a Function of Incentive Value at Five Levels of Task Demand

This study examined cardiovascular effects of incentive value in men and women confronted with cognitive challenges that were more and less difficult to meet. Participants performed computer memory tasks varying in difficulty from low to high, with instructions that they could earn chances toward a $100 prize or $10 prize by attaining a 90% success rate. Analysis of cardiovascular responses assessed during work revealed an interaction between difficulty and incentive value for heart rate. Participants' heart rate responses were proportional to task difficulty and unaffected by incentive value in all conditions except for the most difficult one. Where difficulty was greatest, $100 participants showed relatively high heart rate responsiveness, whereas $10 participants showed low heart rate responsiveness. This heart rate finding corroborates and extends cardiovascular results from previous experiments, and lends further support to the view that cardiovascular responses will be proportional to incentive value only under some task conditions.     

Self-focused attention,performance expectancies,and the intensity of effort: Do people try harder for harder goals?

Many theories argue that goal striving is more intense when people have optimistic expectancies for achieving the goal and when attention is self-focused. Brehm’s motivational intensity theory, however, predicts that the intensity of motivation is only as high as necessary, so people will try harder for difficult tasks than for easy tasks, all else equal. The present experiment compared these two approaches by manipulating two levels of self-focused attention (low and high self-awareness, via a mirror) and two levels of task difficulty (easy and difficult). Effort was assessed as cardiovascular reactivity, particularly change in systolic blood pressure. Neither high self-focus nor an easy task per se caused increased effort; instead, high self-focus significantly increased systolic reactivity when the task was difficult. Effort was thus higher despite less optimistic goal expectancies, a finding that is predicted by Brehm’s motivational intensity theory but not by traditional self-regulation models.     

Influence of short-term memory codes on visual image processing: evidence from image transformation tasks.

Three experiments showed that phonological recording of visual stimuli in short-term memory (STM) affects coding in long-term memory (LTM) and therefore performance on tasks involving generation and manipulation of visual images of the stimuli. An image transformation task was devised. It consists of mentally subtracting a part of an image to discover in the remainder another object. In Experiment 1, Ss were required to learn a set of easily nameable visual stimuli and then perform the subtraction task on images retrieved from LTM. Performance was significantly better when initial learning was accompanied by articulatory suppression (AS). Experiment 2 confirmed that AS had no effect when the task was performed on an image of a just-presented stimulus. In Experiment 3, the nameability of the stimuli was manipulated. The results replicated the effect of AS for items that were easy to name but showed no effect of AS for stimuli that were difficult to name.     

Individual differences in secondary task performance

The purpose of this research was to use secondary task performance as a predictor of performance on a difficult primary task. Reaction time (RT) to secondary probes that occurred during the rehearsal period of an easy memory task were used to measure spare capacity associated with the memory task. This measure was then correlated with performance on a harder version of the same memory task. Experiments 1-4 involved a paired associate memory task. Probe RT was sensitive to the difficulty of the paired associate task, and analysis of individual differences showed that probe RT during the easy version of the task was correlated with performance on a harder version of the task. Experiment 4 also utilized a spatial memory task. Probe RT was less sensitive to the demands of the spatial memory task, and in that case, the "easy-to-hard" prediction was not successful.     

Categorization of disoriented faces in the cerebral hemispheres of normal and commissurotomized subjects

We examined the capacity of the cerebral hemispheres to process faces that deviate from canonical perspective. In Experiment 1, normal Ss performed a gender categorization of faces presented at varying angular orientations in the left visual field (LVF) or right visual field (RVF). Orientation affected processing speed, more so in the RVF than in the LVF. The function relating reaction times to disorientation of the faces was approximately monotonic and reflected the increased difficulty in extracting relevant configurational information as the faces were rotated from canonical perspective. In Experiment 2, 3 commissurotomized Ss performed the same task. They responded above chance in the 2 visual fields, and the pattern of their results was similar to that obtained with the normal Ss, but the effect of disorientation was considerably more pronounced. It is suggested that the right hemisphere contribution becomes more critical the further the visual pattern departs from conventional view. Issues regarding the specification of processes correcting for disorientation and comparison of normal and commissurotomized Ss are discussed.     

Self-Relevance of Performance, Task Difficulty, and Task Engagement Assessed as Cardiovascular Response

Two experiments examined task engagement, quantified as cardiovascular (CV) response, under conditions of high self-relevance of performance (i. e., when performance had strong implications for the individual's self-definition and self-esteem). Experiment 1 involved a 2 (self-relevance) × 2 (task difficulty) design and revealed, in accordance with predictions derived from Brehm's energization model, that self-relevance per se does not result in high engagement, but that high self-relevance bound up with high task difficulty does. Experiment 2 involved three difficulty conditions (very easy, moderate, very difficult) under highly self-relevant performance conditions and revealed a curvilinear difficulty/engagement relationship. In both studies CV responses were independent of feeling states.     

Long-term memory in pigeons: I. The role of discrimination problem difficulty assessed by reacquisition measures II. The role of stimulus modality assessed by generalization slope

Pigeons learned either an easy or a difficult line angle discrimination (Experiment 1) or wavelength discrimination (Experiment 2), and then they were given a reacquisition test of retention after delays of 1 min, 1 day, or 1 week. Both percentage of responses to the S+ in the initial 10-trial block and number of blocks to criterion showed a progressive memory loss which was greater for the difficult problem. These results extend recent findings by using a free operant rather than a discrete trial task and by varying problem difficulty by altering the dimensional separation between training stimuli. In Experiment 3, pigeons were given variable interval training with either a wavelength or a line angle stimulus, and then they were tested for generalization in extinction after delays of 1 min, 1 day, and 1 week. With both dimensions, the relative gradients became progressively flatter with increasing delay intervals. This replicates earlier findings and extends them to the line angle dimension. The evidence of substantial forgetting in the first 24 h in all three experiments suggests that operant free-response procedures are more sensitive to forgetting effects than are discrete trial tasks.     

Postperformance attributions and task persistence among type A and B individuals: a clarification

We examined task persistence and postperformance attributions by Type As and Bs on tasks that varied in level of difficulty. On the basis of past research, we hypothesized that Type As would be more self-serving than Type Bs in their attributions for success and failure. We also hypothesized that task persistence would differ among Type As and Bs and would be dependent on task difficulty and perceived task diagnosticity. Type As and Bs attempted multiple sets of anagrams that were either easy or difficult. We measured persistence by the number of anagram sets attempted, and, after task performance, we assessed attributions for success and failure. Results supported both hypotheses. Type As took more credit for success than for failure, whereas Type Bs did not provide reliably different attributions for success and failure. Furthermore, Type As persisted longer at the task when it was difficult and when it was viewed as relatively low in information value. Type Bs persisted longer at the task when it was difficult but viewed as relatively high in information value. Results are discussed in the context of current debates regarding the responses of Type As and Bs to performance settings.     

Age and redintegration in immediate memory and their relationship to task difficulty

It is commonly assumed that as short-term memory tasks become more difficult, a transient phonological trace that supports recall loses its fidelity. Recall can still be achieved through a process called redintegration, where long-term phonological or lexical knowledge is used to reconstruct the memory trace. In the present research, we explored age-related differences in the redintegration process by having older and younger participants study lists under different levels of task difficulty. As a means of examining the redintegration process, in Experiment 1, semantic similarity was manipulated, and in Experiment 2, phonological similarity was varied. The results show that similarity effects can be accurately predicted from knowledge of task difficulty with item scoring, but not with order scoring. The results support the redintegration perspective and indicate that although there may be differences in the absolute level of recall across age groups, the redintegration process is identical for younger and older participants.     

Repeated retrieval practice and item difficulty: Does criterion learning eliminate item difficulty effects?

A wealth of previous research has established that retrieval practice promotes memory, particularly when retrieval is successful. Although successful retrieval promotes memory, it remains unclear whether successful retrieval promotes memory equally well for items of varying difficulty. Will easy items still outperform difficult items on a final test if all items have been correctly recalled equal numbers of times during practice? In two experiments, normatively difficult and easy Lithuanian–English word pairs were learned via test–restudy practice until each item had been correctly recalled a preassigned number of times (from 1 to 11 correct recalls). Despite equating the numbers of successful recalls during practice, performance on a delayed final cued-recall test was lower for difficult than for easy items. Experiment 2 was designed to diagnose whether the disadvantage for difficult items was due to deficits in cue memory, target memory, and/or associative memory. The results revealed a disadvantage for the difficult versus the easy items only on the associative recognition test, with no differences on cue recognition, and even an advantage on target recognition. Although successful retrieval enhanced memory for both difficult and easy items, equating retrieval success during practice did not eliminate normative item difficulty differences.     

Discrepancy-plus-search processes in prospective memory retrieval

In the present study, we investigated the processes underlying prospective memory (PM) retrieval, focusing specifically on two possible spontaneous processes: discrepancy-plus-search and familiarity. Discrepancy was elicited by orthogonally manipulating the processing difficulties of the PM targets and the nontargets. Participants performed a PM task while solving anagrams with two levels of difficulty (easy or difficult). Assuming that the ease of processing easy anagrams would heighten a sense of familiarity, the familiarity view predicted better PM performance with easy anagrams as the PM targets. In contrast, the discrepancy-plus-search view predicted higher PM performance for the PM targets that were anagrams whose difficulty level mismatched that of the surrounding nontargets, as compared to PM targets whose difficulty matched that of the surrounding nontargets. This prediction was based on the idea that mismatching rather than matching difficulty levels would create discrepancy, thereby signaling significance for the target. Participants were more likely to perform the PM task for PM targets that were discrepant, supporting the discrepancy-plus-search view.     

How pleasant was your childhood? Beliefs about memory shape inferences from experienced difficulty of recall

People's beliefs about how memory works can affect their inferences from experienced difficulty of recall. Participants were asked to recall either 4 childhood events (experienced as an easy task) or 12 childhood events (experienced as a difficult task). Subsequently, they were led to believe that either pleasant or unpleasant periods of one's life fade from memory. When the recall task was difficult (12 events), participants who believed that memories from unpleasant periods fade away rated their childhood as less happy than participants who believed that memories from pleasant periods fade away. The opposite pattern was observed when the recall task was easy (4 events). This interplay of recall experiences and memory beliefs suggests that the judgmental impact of subjective experiences is shaped by beliefs about their meaning. It also suggests that the recall difficulty in clinical memory work may lead a person to make negative inferences about his or her childhood, provided the person shares the popular belief that memory represses negative information.