Abstract
This chapter will address the following questions: What is meant by mental effort? What is its role in human information processing? How can effort be measured? The chapter will consider the ways in which the concept of effort has been used in different theories of human information processing. Effort may be measured in behavioural, subjective and physiological domains. The present approach will focus on the physiological indices. The concept of mental effort has been thought necessary in theories of behaviour for several reasons: (1) To account for individual differences in intellectual performance in terms of differences in motivation and in the availability of mental resources. (2) As an analogy for physical effort in theories of mental workload, and (3) To explain the effects of stressors such as noise, lack of sleep, time-on-task, etc, on human performance.
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