CONCEPT
Schedule-Induced Persistence
The experimental phenomenon in which organisms continue responding at rates determined by the schedule parameters rather than by the current utility of the behavior — the mechanism behind AI compulsive maintenance after the productivity gains have diminished.
Schedule-induced persistence is the behavioral phenomenon in which organisms continue responding at rates characteristic of the reinforcement schedule that has maintained the behavior, even when current conditions would justify a different allocation of behavioral resources. The phenomenon emerges from the principle that behavior maintained by a reinforcement schedule acquires momentum — a property of the behavior-schedule interaction that the behavioral literature calls behavioral momentum — that resists modification by changes in context or current utility. The Skinner volume identifies this phenomenon as the mechanism behind the transition from acquisition-phase productive engagement to maintenance-phase compulsive continuation: the behavior persists at the rate established during acquisition even after the reinforcement magnitude has habituated and the actual utility of continued engagement has diminished.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The phenomenon of behavioral momentum was systematically analyzed by John Nevin in a series of papers beginning in the 1980s, extending the metaphor from physics to specify the dimensions of behavior