PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
We must often decide whether the effort required for a task is worth the reward. Past rodent work suggests that willingness to deploy cognitive effort can be driven by individual differences in perceived reward value, depression, or chronic stress. However, many factors driving cognitive effort deployment-such as short-term memory ability-cannot easily be captured in rodents. Furthermore, we do not fully understand how individual differences in short-term memory ability, depression, chronic stress, and reward anticipation impact cognitive effort deployment for reward. Here, we examined whether these factors predict cognitive effort deployment for higher reward in an online visual short-term memory task. Undergraduate participants were grouped into high and low effort groups (n HighEffort = 348, n LowEffort = 81; n Female = 332, n Male = 92, M Age = 20.37, Range Age = 16-42) based on decisions in this task. After completing a monetary incentive task to measure reward anticipation, participants completed short-term memory task trials where they could choose to encode either fewer (low effort/reward) or more (high effort/reward) squares before reporting whether or not the color of a target square matched the square previously in that location. We found that only greater short-term memory ability predicted whether participants chose a much higher proportion of high versus low effort trials. Drift diffusion modeling showed that high effort group participants were more biased than low effort group participants toward selecting high effort trials. Our findings highlight the role of individual differences in cognitive effort ability in explaining cognitive effort deployment choices.
摘要：
我们必须经常决定一项任务所需的努力是否值得奖励。过去的啮齿动物工作表明，部署认知努力的意愿可以由感知奖励价值的个体差异驱动，抑郁症,或慢性压力。然而,驱动认知努力部署的许多因素-例如短期记忆能力-在啮齿动物中不容易被捕获。此外，我们并不完全理解短期记忆能力的个体差异，抑郁症,慢性压力，和奖励预期影响奖励的认知努力部署。这里,我们研究了这些因素是否可以预测在线视觉短期记忆任务中获得更高奖励的认知努力部署.根据这项任务的决定，将本科生参与者分为高努力组和低努力组（n高努力=348，n低努力=81；n女性=332，n男性=92，M年龄=20.37，范围年龄=16-42）。在完成货币激励任务以衡量奖励预期后，参与者完成了短期记忆任务试验,在这些试验中,他们可以选择编码更少的(低努力/奖励)或更多的(高努力/奖励)方格,然后报告目标方格的颜色是否与该位置之前的方格匹配.我们发现，只有更高的短期记忆能力才能预测参与者是否选择了更高比例的高低努力试验。漂移扩散模型显示，高努力组参与者比低努力组参与者更偏向于选择高努力试验。我们的发现强调了认知努力能力中个体差异在解释认知努力部署选择中的作用。重要性陈述我们必须经常决定什么时候认知努力值得潜在的回报。奖励值,抑郁症,啮齿动物的慢性压力会影响认知努力部署奖励的决定，但是像短期记忆能力这样的因素只能在人类中容易地表征。我们检查了短期记忆能力，抑郁症,慢性压力，奖励预期预测奖励的认知努力决定。在短期视觉记忆任务中，选择更容易或更难的试验来进行低与高额奖励,我们发现，只有短期记忆能力预测更多的选择高与高低努力试验。这项研究表明，认知努力决策可能受到认知努力能力的驱动，而不是抑郁或慢性压力等动机因素。
