Discriminative control of generalized effort.

Increasing the degree of effort required for the successful performance of one behavior has been found to heighten the subsequent performance of other behaviors. The present research tested whether discriminative stimuli for effort control the quantity and quality of transfer performance. Two experimenters administered alternately a perceptual task which required college students to identify subtle differences between cartoon drawings. The high-effort experimenter required five identifications per pair of drawings; the low-effort experimenter, one identification. The later assignment of an essay by the high-effort experimenter, as compared to the low-effort experimenter, resulted in a greater essay length and quality. These findings suggest that cues which signal the degree of effort required for reinforcement exert discriminative control over generalized effort.