Mental effort and discomfort: Testing the peak-end effect during a cognitively demanding task.

Chia-Fen Hsu,Shane Martin,Maggie E Toplak,Larissa Panetta,John D Eastwood,Stella Dentakos,Lee Propp,Iratxe Puebla

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0191479

Chia-Fen Hsu, Shane Martin + Show 6 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191479

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Abstract

We applied the peak-end paradigm that was first introduced in the pain literature to examine the experience of effort and discomfort during a cognitively demanding working memory task. A total of 401 participants were asked to rate their effort and discomfort during and after the administration of a working memory task, which systematically varied task difficulty within participants and task duration between participants. Over the course of the task, participants reported a decrease in reported effort and an increase in reported discomfort. Peak and end real-time ratings were significant predictors of retrospective ratings for effort and discomfort; average and initial ratings predicted a small amount of additional variance. The regression analyses with effort and discomfort were largely consistent, with some exceptions. End discomfort significantly predicted willingness to do the task again, but not end effort. These findings highlight the ways in which the experience of effort and discomfort are integrally related, yet importantly separate, during a cognitively demanding task.

Highlights

Sometimes thinking occurs relatively effortlessly, such as when we let our minds wander or when we complete an overlearned task
Notwithstanding the considerable debate regarding the definition and causal processes underlying the experience of mental effort [1,2,3,4], when considered from a functional perspective, there appears to be consensus that subjective mental effort might serve as a self-regulatory ‘signal’ that motivates a change in behaviour [5,6,7,8] or is taken as ‘input’ in decision-making processes [9,10,11,12]
Subjective mental effort serves a critical role in regulating our cognition, and it tends to be uncomfortable so we avoid tasks that require it [11,12,13]

Summary

Introduction

Sometimes thinking occurs relatively effortlessly, such as when we let our minds wander or when we complete an overlearned task. It is important to understand the dynamics of subjective mental effort, and the possible association with discomfort, to understand how retrospective memories of cognitively demanding tasks are formed These kinds of questions have been relatively well studied in the pain literature and that is where we turned for inspiration Participants preferred to repeat situation #2 and recalled it as being less difficult and uncomfortable than situation #1 These results suggest that how a cognitive task ends is critically important to retrospective memories and preferences for subsequent tasks. We hypothesized that retrospective memory of how uncomfortable the task was would be predicted by peak and end levels of real-time discomfort, but not duration of the task. We were able to investigate the independent contribution of peak moments (un-confounded from beginnings and endings) in the prediction of retrospective memories of the task

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