Persistence during extinction: are judgments of persistence affected by contingency information?

The partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE), defined as increased behavioral persistence following intermittent reward, is considered an important outcome of instrumental learning contingencies, both inside and outside the laboratory. Since adults have a rich experience with situations in which desired outcomes depend on instrumental responding, we asked whether that experience affects judgments of persistence when relevant contingency information is manipulated. Subjects read simple scenarios with information about behaviors generated by high vs. low reward rate, and then judged the resultant persistence of these behaviors under no-reward conditions. Studies 1 and 2 found no evidence that persistence judgments were affected by contingency information in naive subjects. Studies 3 and 4 compared groups with and without explicit knowledge about behavioral psychology and thus tested possible effects of that knowledge for persistence more directly. Judgments in naive subjects were not reliably influenced by reward rate information, but subjects possessing expert knowledge demonstrated judgments that were reliably affected by contingency information. The results indicate that people do not generate generalized knowledge from normal experience with occasional vs. regular reward. Possible explanations and implications of these findings are discussed.