Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder, 995 Regent Dr. Koelbel Building 419 UCB, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Psychol Res. 2019 Jul;83(5):1033-1056. doi: 10.1007/s00426-017-0943-x. Epub 2017 Nov 13.
Why are some actions evaluated as effortful? In the present set of experiments we address this question by examining individuals' perception of effort when faced with a trade-off between two putative cognitive costs: how much time a task takes vs. how error-prone it is. Specifically, we were interested in whether individuals anticipate engaging in a small amount of hard work (i.e., low time requirement, but high error-likelihood) vs. a large amount of easy work (i.e., high time requirement, but low error-likelihood) as being more effortful. In between-subject designs, Experiments 1 through 3 demonstrated that individuals anticipate options that are high in perceived error-likelihood (yet less time consuming) as more effortful than options that are perceived to be more time consuming (yet low in error-likelihood). Further, when asked to evaluate which of the two tasks was (a) more effortful, (b) more error-prone, and (c) more time consuming, effort-based and error-based choices closely tracked one another, but this was not the case for time-based choices. Utilizing a within-subject design, Experiment 4 demonstrated overall similar pattern of judgments as Experiments 1 through 3. However, both judgments of error-likelihood and time demand similarly predicted effort judgments. Results are discussed within the context of extant accounts of cognitive control, with considerations of how error-likelihood and time demands may independently and conjunctively factor into judgments of cognitive effort.
为什么有些行为被评估为费力？在本系列实验中，我们通过检查个体在面临两种假设的认知成本之间的权衡时对努力的感知来解决这个问题：一项任务需要多少时间与它的出错概率有多高。具体来说，我们感兴趣的是，个体是否预期从事少量的艰苦工作（即低时间要求，但高出错可能性）还是大量的简单工作（即高时间要求，但低出错可能性）会更费力。在被试间设计中，实验 1 至 3 表明，个体预期感知到出错可能性较高（但耗时较少）的选项比感知到耗时较多（但出错可能性较低）的选项更费力。此外，当被要求评估两个任务中哪一个（a）更费力，（b）更易出错，以及（c）更耗时时，基于努力的选择和基于错误的选择密切相关，但基于时间的选择并非如此。利用被试内设计，实验 4 证明了与实验 1 至 3 相似的整体判断模式。然而，错误可能性和时间需求的判断都同样预测了努力的判断。结果在现有的认知控制理论框架内进行了讨论，考虑了错误可能性和时间需求如何独立和共同影响认知努力的判断。
