Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, 101 Warren St., Newark, NJ 07201, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2019 Feb 4;123:55-66. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.06.011. Epub 2018 Jun 12.
Research at the intersection of social neuroscience and cognitive effort is an interesting new area for exploration. There is great potential to broaden our understanding of how social context and cognitive effort processes, currently addressed in disparate literatures, interact with one another. In this paper, we briefly review the literature on cognitive effort, focusing on effort-linked valuation and the gap in the literature regarding cognitive effort in the social domain. Next, we present a study designed to explore valuation processes linked to cognitive effort within the social context of an inequality manipulation. More specifically, we created monetary inequality among the participant (SELF, endowed with $50) and two confederates: one also endowed with $50 (OTHER HIGH) and another with only $5 (OTHER LOW). We then scanned participants using fMRI as they attempted to earn bonus payments for themselves and others through a cognitively effortful feedback-based learning task. Positive feedback produced significantly greater activation than negative feedback in key valuation regions, the ventral striatum (VS) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), both when participants were performing the task on their own behalf and when earning rewards for others. While reward-related activity in the VS was exaggerated for SELF compared to OTHER HIGH for both positive and negative feedback, activity in the vmPFC did not distinguish between recipients in the group-level results. Furthermore, participants naturally fell into two groups: those most engaged when playing for themselves and those who reported engagement for others. While Self-Engaged participants showed differences between the SELF and both OTHER conditions in the VS and vmPFC, Other-Engaged participants only showed an attenuated response to negative feedback for OTHER HIGH compared to SELF in the VS and no differences between recipient conditions in the vmPFC. Together, this work shows the importance of individual differences and the fragility of advantageous inequality aversion in the face of cognitive effort, highlighting the need to study cognitive effort in the social domain.
社交神经科学和认知努力的交叉研究是一个有趣的新探索领域。有很大的潜力可以拓宽我们对社会背景和认知努力过程的理解，目前这些过程在不同的文献中得到了探讨，它们相互作用。在本文中，我们简要回顾了认知努力的文献，重点介绍了与努力相关的评估以及文献中关于认知努力在社会领域的不足。接下来，我们介绍了一项旨在探索社会背景下与认知努力相关的评估过程的研究，该研究是通过不平等操纵来进行的。更具体地说，我们在参与者（SELF，拥有 50 美元）和两个同伙（一个也拥有 50 美元的 OTHER HIGH 和一个只有 5 美元的 OTHER LOW）之间创造了货币不平等。然后，我们让参与者在进行一项认知努力的基于反馈的学习任务时使用 fMRI 进行扫描，该任务旨在为自己和他人赚取奖金。积极反馈比消极反馈在关键的评估区域（腹侧纹状体（VS）和腹内侧前额叶皮层（vmPFC））中产生了显著更大的激活，当参与者代表自己和他人执行任务时都是如此。虽然在SELF 中，与 OTHER HIGH 相比，VS 中的奖励相关活动在积极和消极反馈时都被夸大了，但在vmPFC 中，在组水平的结果中并没有区分接收者。此外，参与者自然分为两组：那些为自己玩时最投入的人，以及那些为他人玩时投入的人。虽然SELF 条件与其他条件相比，SELF-Engaged 参与者在 VS 和 vmPFC 中都表现出差异，但 Other-Engaged 参与者仅在 VS 中对 OTHER HIGH 的负反馈表现出减弱的反应，而在 vmPFC 中，接收者条件之间没有差异。总的来说，这项工作表明了个体差异的重要性和认知努力面前有利的不平等厌恶的脆弱性，强调了在社会领域研究认知努力的必要性。
