Effects of conceptual task difficulty on generalized persistence.

A set of experiments tested whether the degree of effort rewarded in a conceptual task would affect subsequent persistence in a perceptual task. College students were presented with complex, simple, or unsolvable anagrams or, in a control group, merely read the anagram target words; the perceptual task requiring the identification of subtle or nonexistent differences between cartoon drawings followed. Those who had worked on unsolvable anagrams spent greater time on the cartoon drawings compared with those who had worked on simple anagrams or anagram target words, suggesting that initial failure on assigned tasks serves as a cue to work harder. The complex group spent more time on the cartoon task than the simple group, control group and, following sufficient failure, the unsolvable group. The complex group was also found to spend more time on the cartoons than a group which experienced exactly the same distribution of successes and failures on the anagrams but which always failed after high effort. Two interpretations of the superior persistence of the complex group were compared: (a) the degree of accustomed effort per reinforcer becomes a generalized component of instrumental behavior, and (b) high effort increases the habituation of frustration-produced disruptive responses.