Kukkonen Nanne, Braem Senne, Allaert Jens, Eayrs Joshua O, Prutean Nicoleta, Steendam S Tabitha, Boehler C Nico, Wiersema Jan R, Notebaert Wim, Krebs Ruth M
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
Department of Head and Skin, Ghent University, Belgium.
J Cogn. 2025 Jan 7;8(1):9. doi: 10.5334/joc.415. eCollection 2025.
Many theories on cognitive effort start from the assumption that cognitive effort can be expended at will, and flexibly up- or down-regulated depending on expected task demand and rewards. However, while effort regulation has been investigated across a wide range of incentive conditions, few investigated the cost of effort regulation itself. Across four experiments, we studied the effects of reward expectancy and task difficulty on effort expenditure in a perceptual decision-making task (random-dot-motion) and a cognitive control task (colour-naming Stroop), and within each task comparted cues between short (cueing the next trial) and long (cueing the next six trials) prediction horizons. We found that participants used the cue information only when it was valid for multiple trials in a row. In the random-dot-motion task, a high reward expectancy resulted in better accuracy, especially in easy trials, but only with long prediction horizon. Similarly, in the Stroop task, the reward facilitation of reaction time was only observed after reward cues with a long prediction horizon. Together, our results indicate that people experience a cost to effort regulation, and that lower adjustment frequency can compensate for this cost.
许多关于认知努力的理论都始于这样一种假设，即认知努力可以随意付出，并根据预期的任务需求和奖励灵活地进行上调或下调。然而，虽然在广泛的激励条件下都对努力调节进行了研究，但很少有人研究努力调节本身的成本。通过四项实验，我们研究了奖励预期和任务难度对感知决策任务（随机点运动）和认知控制任务（颜色命名斯特鲁普任务）中努力付出的影响，并且在每个任务中比较了短预测范围（提示下一次试验）和长预测范围（提示接下来六次试验）之间的线索。我们发现，参与者仅在连续多次试验有效的情况下才使用线索信息。在随机点运动任务中，高奖励预期会带来更高的准确性，尤其是在简单试验中，但仅在长预测范围内如此。同样，在斯特鲁普任务中，只有在具有长预测范围的奖励线索之后，才观察到奖励对反应时间的促进作用。总之，我们的结果表明，人们在努力调节过程中会经历成本，并且较低的调整频率可以弥补这一成本。
