A Preliminary Study on Relationship of Effort to Postasymptotic Performance Decreasing

In criticizing the Hullian theory of inhibition and extinction, Gleitman, Nachmias, and Neisser (1954) pointed out that, according to the Hullian learning equation, the ordinary learning curve should not be monotonically increasing, but instead should rise to a maximum and then eventually return to the base line. This can be deduced as follows: As a habit strength reaches its asymptote through repeated reinforcements, further reinforcements cannot add any further effective increments to the habit strength and so the reactive inhibition (IR) and conditioned inhibition (SIR) should grow unopposed with each repetition of the habit. In other words, further reinforcements can only lead to progresive decrements in performance, and will eventually cause the total elimination of the response. This postasymptotic performance decreasing (PPD) has been called inhibition of reinforcement by Hovland (1936) and inhibition with reinforcement by Kendrick (1958).