反応の「相対的」努力負荷量が消去と自発回復に及ぼす影響

学習の場理論的研究 II

抄録

In a situation where extinction of a conditioned (continuously reinforced) response would be indicated by the change to an alternative response for the same goal, the effect of “relative” effortfulness of the conditioned response to that of the alternative response upon extinction and spontaneous recovery was examined. Hodologically, in this situation, the occurrence of the alternative response would mean that the psychological force has changed its direction.
In view of the fact that extinction is a function of the effortfulness of a response, it was expected that the greater the relative effortfulness the smaller the resistance to extinction. No significant difference, however, was found between the effects of different relative amounts of effort upon extinction, in spite of the fact that they were accompanied by statistically significant difference in the tendency to spontaneousr recovery : the greater the relative effortfulness of a response the smaller the tendency to spontaneous recovery. These results seems to indicate that spontaneous recovery is more sensitive to the relative effortfulness of a response than extinction.
No significant decrease in habit strength as measured by the number of errors, latency, and time required to perform the response was found even right up to time of complete extinction. Extinction, therefore, seems to be due to the changed direction of a psychological force rather than to the decrease in habit strength.