What Is the Subjective Cost of Cognitive Effort? Load, Trait, and Aging Effects Revealed by Economic Preference

PLoS ONE

Volumn 8, Issue 7, 2013, Pages

  Westbrook, Andrew ^a   Kester, Daria ^a   Braver, Todd S ^a  

^a WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADULT; AGED; AGING; ARTICLE; BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS; COGNITIVE EFFORT; DECISION MAKING; DELAY DISCOUNTING; ECONOMIC ASPECT; ECONOMIC PREFERENCE; EXECUTIVE FUNCTION; EXPERIENCE; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; MENTAL CAPACITY; MENTAL PERFORMANCE; MENTAL TASK; MONEY; MOTIVATION; NORMAL HUMAN; QUALITY CONTROL; REWARD; VALIDATION PROCESS; WORKING MEMORY;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AGED; AGED, 80 AND OVER; AGING; COGNITION; DECISION MAKING; ECONOMICS, BEHAVIORAL; HUMANS; MOTIVATION; REPRODUCIBILITY OF RESULTS; REWARD; SELF REPORT; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84880648493     PISSN: None     EISSN: 19326203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0068210     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Allport GW (1954) The nature of prejudice. New York, NY: Addison Wesley.
2. Taylor SE (1981) The interface of cognitive and social psychology. In: Harvey JH, editor. Cognition, social behavior, and the environment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. pp. 189-211.
3. Kool W, McGuire JT, Rosen ZB, Botvinick MM, (2010) Decision making and the avoidance of cognitive demand. Journal of Experimental Psychology-General 139: 665-682 doi:10.1037/a0020198.
4. Hull CL (1943) Principles of behavior. New York, NY: Appleton-Century.
5. McGuire J, Botvinick M, (2010) Prefrontal cortex, cognitive control, and the registration of decision costs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 7922.
6. Cocker PJ, Hosking JG, Benoit J, Winstanley CA, (2012) Sensitivity to Cognitive Effort Mediates Psychostimulant Effects on a Novel Rodent Cost/Benefit Decision-Making Task. Neuropsychopharmacology: official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology 37: 1825-1837 Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npp.2012.30.
7. Hammar Å, Strand M, Årdal G, Schmid M, Lund A, et al. (2011) Testing the cognitive effort hypothesis of cognitive impairment in major depression. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry 65: 74-80 doi:10.3109/08039488.2010.494311.
8. Hartlage S, Alloy LB, Vázquez C, Dykman B, (1993) Automatic and effortful processing in depression. Psychological Bulletin 113: 247.
9. Hertel PT, (1994) Depression and memory: Are impairments remediable through attentional control? Current Directions in Psychological Science 3: 190-193.
10. Altgassen M, Kliegel M, Martin M, (2009) Event-based prospective memory in depression: The impact of cue focality. Cognition & Emotion 23: 1041-1055 doi:10.1080/02699930802284158.
11. Hess TM, Ennis GE, (2011) Age Differences in the Effort and Costs Associated With Cognitive Activity. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 67: 447-455 doi: 1n0b./1g0b9r31/2g9eronb/gbr129.
12. Baltes PB, Staudinger UM, Lindenberger U, (1999) Lifespan psychology: Theory and application to intellectual functioning. Annual Review of Psychology 50: 471-507.
13. Hart SG, Staveland LE, (1988) Development of NASA-TLX (Task Load Index): Results of empirical and theoretical research. Human Mental Workload 1: 139-183.
14. Cacioppo JT, Petty RE, Kao CF, (1984) The efficient assessment of need for cognition. Journal of Personality Assessment 48: 306-307.
15. Myerson J, Green L, (1995) Discounting of delayed rewards: Models of individual choice. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 64: 263.
16. Peters J, Buchel C, (2009) Overlapping and distinct neural systems code for subjective value during intertemporal and risky decision making. Journal of Neuroscience 29: 15727.
17. Kable J, Glimcher P, (2007) The neural correlates of subjective value during intertemporal choice. Nature Neuroscience 10: 1625-1633.
18. McClure SM, Ericson KM, Laibson DI, Loewenstein G, Cohen JD, (2007) Time discounting for primary rewards. Journal of Neuroscience 27: 5796-5804 doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4246-06.2007.
19. Prévost C, Pessiglione M, Météreau E, Cléry-Melin M-L, Dreher J-C, (2010) Separate valuation subsystems for delay and effort decision costs. Journal of Neuroscience 30: 14080-14090 doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2752-10.2010.
20. Salamone J, Correa M, Farrar A, Mingote S, (2007) Effort-related functions of nucleus accumbens dopamine and associated forebrain circuits. Psychopharmacology 191: 461-482.
21. Botvinick MM, Huffstetler S, McGuire JT, (2009) Effort discounting in human nucleus accumbens. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 9: 16-27 doi:10.3758/CABN.9.1.16.
22. Schmidt L, Lebreton M, Cléry-Melin M-L, Daunizeau J, Pessiglione M, (2012) Neural Mechanisms Underlying Motivation of Mental Versus Physical Effort. PLoS Biology 10: e1001266 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001266.g006.
23. Owen AM, McMillan KM, Laird AR, Bullmore E, (2005) N-back working memory paradigm: A meta-analysis of normative functional neuroimaging studies. Human Brain Mapping 25: 46-59 doi:10.1002/hbm.20131.
24. Ewing K, Fairclough S (2010) The impact of working memory load on psychophysiological measures of mental effort and motivational disposition. In: de Waard D, Axelsson A, Berglund M, Peters B, Weickert C, editors. Human Factors: A system view of human, technology and organisation. Maastricht: Shaker Publishing.
25. Braver T, Cohen J, Nystrom L, Jonides J, Smith E, et al. (1997) A parametric study of prefrontal cortex involvement in human working memory. NeuroImage 5: 49-62.
26. Katzman R, Brown T, Fuld P, Peck A, Schechter R, et al. (1983) Six-Item Cognitive Impairment test (6CIT). American Journal of Psychiatry 140: 734-739.
27. Kirby KN, Herrnstein RJ, (1995) Preference reversals due to myopic discounting of delayed reward. Psychological Science 6: 83-89.
28. Holt DD, Green L, Myerson J, (2012) Estimating the subjective value of future rewards: Comparison of adjusting-amount and adjusting-delay procedures. Behavioural Processes 90: 302-310 doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2012.03.003.
29. Ariely D, Loewenstein G, Prelec D, (2003) "Coherent arbitrariness": Stable demand curves without stable preferences. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 118: 73-106.
30. Shamosh NA, Gray JR, (2008) Delay discounting and intelligence: A meta-analysis. Intelligence 36: 289-305 doi:10.1016/j.intell.2007.09.004.
31. Green L, Fry AF, Myerson J, (1994) Discounting of delayed rewards: A life-span comparison. Psychological Science 5: 33.
32. Gelman A, Hill J (2007) Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. New York: Cambridge Univ Press.
33. Pinheiro J, Bates D, Saikat D, Sarkar D, (2013) nlme: Linear and Nonlinear Mixed Effects Models. R package Available: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/nlme/index.html.
34. Myerson J, Green L, Warusawitharana M, (2001) Area under the curve as a measure of discounting. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 76: 235.
35. Emery L, Heaven TJ, Paxton JL, Braver TS, (2008) Age-related changes in neural activity during performance matched working memory manipulation. NeuroImage 42: 1577-1586 doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.06.021.
36. Thaler R, (1981) Some empirical evidence on dynamic inconsistency. Economics Letters 8: 201-207.
37. Mischel W, Shoda Y, Rodriguez ML, (1989) Delay of Gratification in Children. Science 244: 933-938.
38. Kool W, Wang G, McGuire JT, Botvinick MM, under review) A role for effort costs in self-control and intertemporal choice. PLoS ONE.
39. Green L, Myerson J, Lichtman D, Rosen S, Fry A, (1996) Temporal discounting in choice between delayed rewards: The role of age and income. Psychology and Aging 11: 79-84.
40. Roberts BW, Walton KE, Viechtbauer W, (2006) Patterns of Mean-Level Change in Personality Traits Across the Life Course: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies. Psychological Bulletin 132: 1-25 doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.1.1.
41. Mohr PNC, Li S-C, Heekeren HR, (2010) Neuroeconomics and aging: Neuromodulation of economic decision making in old age. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 34: 678-688 doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2009.05.010.
42. Bäckman L, Nyberg L, Lindenberger U, Li S-C, Farde L, (2006) The correlative triad among aging, dopamine, and cognition: Current status and future prospects. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 30: 791-807 doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2006.06.005.
43. Niv Y, Daw N, Joel D, Dayan P, (2007) Tonic dopamine: opportunity costs and the control of response vigor. Psychopharmacology 191: 507-520.
44. Walton M, Kennerley S, Bannerman D, Phillips P, Rushworth M, (2006) Weighing up the benefits of work: behavioral and neural analyses of effort-related decision making. Neural networks 19: 1302-1314.
45. Mai B, Sommer S, Hauber W, (2011) Motivational states influence effort-based decision making in rats: The role of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 12: 74-84 doi:10.3758/s13415-011-0068-4.
46. Duncan J, Emslie H, Williams P, Johnson R, Freer C, (1996) Intelligence and the frontal lobe: The organization of goal-directed behavior. Cognitive Psychology 30: 257-303.
47. Braver TS, West R (2008) Working memory, executive control, and aging. In: Craik FIM, Salthouse TA, editors. The handbook of aging and cognition. New York, NY: Psychology Press. pp. 311-372.
48. Park DC, Reuter-Lorenz P, (2009) The Adaptive Brain: Aging and Neurocognitive Scaffolding. Annual Review of Psychology 60: 173-196 doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093656.
49. Charles ST, (2010) Strength and vulnerability integration: A model of emotional well-being across adulthood. Psychological Bulletin 136: 1068-1091 doi:10.1037/a0021232.
50. Kurzban R, Duckworth A, Kable JW, Myers J, (2013) A Cost/Benefit Model of Subjective Effort and Task Performance. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36.
51. Westbrook JA, Braver TS, (2013) The economics of cognitive effort. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36.