Balancing the cognitive effort balance: effort being costly and valued
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2021-07-06
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en
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Abstract
Can exertion of cognitive effort be rewarding it itself? Where most research focuses on the
aversive side of effort, there are also situations in which people explicitly enjoy cognitive effort
exertion. Research on flow experiences points towards the intrinsic value of optimal
challenging activities, such that intermediately challenging tasks receive higher liking and
engagement scores compared to easy and difficult tasks. Intrinsic motivation accounts suggest
that this value could arise from its potential for improvement. Moreover, pupillary dynamics
have been associated with task engagement as well. The goal of this study was to investigate
when cognitive effort exertion is intrinsically rewarding and hence preferred, and which
cognitive processes are underlying this preference. In a design with individually defined
difficulty levels and subjective and objective measures of engagement, we showed that
intermediately challenging tasks received the highest subjective and objective engagement
scores, as well as the greatest prediction error magnitude. These findings indicate that
performance uncertainty might by the underlying mechanism of flow experiences. Moreover,
greater pupil sizes during cue period of intermediate tasks together with smaller pupil size
during easy and difficult tasks suggest that the brain at forehand differentiates between tasks
that are worthwhile it to engage in and tasks that are not. As the pupillary responses are
following noradrenaline-based arousal activity, locus-coeruleus activity might mediate this
relationship between optimal challenge preference and task uncertainty.
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Keywords: Cognitive effort; Cognitive avoidance; Flow; Motivation; Cognitive control;
Physiology
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen