Choices favoring cognitive effort in a foraging environment decrease when multiple forms of effort and delay are interleaved.

Autor: Toro-Serey C; Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA. ctoroserey@mclean.harvard.edu.; McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 115 Mill St., MRC 3, MA, 02478, Belmont, USA. ctoroserey@mclean.harvard.edu., Kane GA; Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.; Center for Systems Neuroscience, Boston University, 677 Bacon St., Rm 212, Boston, MA, 02215, USA., McGuire JT; Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.; Center for Systems Neuroscience, Boston University, 677 Bacon St., Rm 212, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience [Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci] 2022 Jun; Vol. 22 (3), pp. 509-532. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Nov 30.
DOI: 10.3758/s13415-021-00972-z
Abstrakt: Cognitive and physical effort are typically regarded as costly, but demands for effort also seemingly boost the appeal of prospects under certain conditions. One contextual factor that might influence choices for or against effort is the mix of different types of demand a decision maker encounters in a given environment. In two foraging experiments, participants encountered prospective rewards that required equally long intervals of cognitive effort, physical effort, or unfilled delay. Monetary offers varied per trial, and the two experiments differed in whether the type of effort or delay cost was the same on every trial, or varied across trials. When each participant faced only one type of cost, cognitive effort persistently produced the highest acceptance rate compared to trials with an equivalent period of either physical effort or unfilled delay. We theorized that if cognitive effort were intrinsically rewarding, we would observe the same pattern of preferences when participants foraged for varying cost types in addition to rewards. Contrary to this prediction, in the second experiment, an initially higher acceptance rate for cognitive effort trials disappeared over time amid an overall decline in acceptance rates as participants gained experience with all three conditions. Our results indicate that cognitive demands may reduce the discounting effect of delays, but not because decision makers assign intrinsic value to cognitive effort. Rather, the results suggest that a cognitive effort requirement might influence contextual factors such as subjective delay duration estimates, which can be recalibrated if multiple forms of demand are interleaved.
(© 2021. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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