Estimation of trade-off between costs of preprocessing and primary processing

Abstract

When people engage in a task, they often take preliminary actions (preprocessing) to simplify primary processing. Usually, a trade-off is made between the costs of preprocessing and primary processing. We conducted three experiments to find out whether people could adaptively estimate the utility of preprocessing depending on the task situation. The result demonstrated that in performing a high-complexity task, almost all the participants reduced their overall task performance cost by conducting cost-adaptive preprocessing. However, for a low-complexity task, participants tended to conduct preprocessing even though this increased overall task performance cost. Based on these results, we discuss human nature from the viewpoint of the influence of cognitive effort.