Response Effort

Response effort is how hard a behaviour is to do. All else being equal, organisms choose the path of least resistance - lower effort behaviours win over higher effort behaviours when they produce the same outcome.

This has direct clinical implications. If a challenging behaviour requires minimal effort and produces immediate reinforcement, and the replacement behaviour you're teaching requires more effort for the same outcome, you're fighting the matching law. The challenging behaviour has a structural advantage.

Reducing response effort is one of the most underused levers in behaviour support. Making the replacement behaviour easier - a single tap on a speech device instead of a complex verbal request, a break card on the desk instead of a walk to the teacher's desk - changes the competition. You can't always make the problem behaviour harder to do without ethical concerns, but you can almost always make the replacement behaviour easier.