Cognitive Costs Research Articles

Event Related Brain Responses Reveal the Impact of Spatial Augmented Reality Predictive Cues on Mental Effort.

This article presents the results from a Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) study which evaluated the cognitive cost of several predictive cues. Participants performed a validated procedural button pressing task, where the predictive cue annotations guided them to the upcoming task. While existing research has evaluated predictive cues based on their performance and self-rated mental effort, actual cognitive cost has yet to be investigated. To measure the user's brain activity, this study utilized electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings. Cognitive load was evaluated by measuring brain responses for a secondary auditory oddball task, with reduced brain responses to oddball tones expected when cognitive load in the primary task is highest. A simple monitor n-back task and procedural task comparing monitor versus SAR were conducted, followed by a version of the procedural task comparing the SAR predictive cues. Results from the brain responses were able to distinguish between performance enhancing cues with a high and low cognitive load. Electrical brain responses also revealed that having an arc or arrow guide towards the upcoming task required the least amount of mental effort.

Action-rule-based cognitive control enables efficient execution of stimulus-response conflict tasks: a model validation of Simon task performance.

The human brain can flexibly modify behavioral rules to optimize task performance (speed and accuracy) by minimizing cognitive load. To show this flexibility, we propose an action-rule-based cognitive control (ARC) model. The ARC model was based on a stochastic framework consistent with an active inference of the free energy principle, combined with schematic brain network systems regulated by the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), to develop several hypotheses for demonstrating the validity of the ARC model. A step-motion Simon task was developed involving congruence or incongruence between important symbolic information (illustration of a foot labeled "L" or "R," where "L" requests left and "R" requests right foot movement) and irrelevant spatial information (whether the illustration is actually of a left or right foot). We made predictions for behavioral and brain responses to testify to the theoretical predictions. Task responses combined with event-related deep-brain activity (ER-DBA) measures demonstrated a key contribution of the dACC in this process and provided evidence for the main prediction that the dACC could reduce the Shannon surprise term in the free energy formula by internally reversing the irrelevant rapid anticipatory postural adaptation. We also found sequential effects with modulated dip depths of ER-DBA waveforms that support the prediction that repeated stimuli with the same congruency can promote remodeling of the internal model through the information gain term while counterbalancing the surprise term. Overall, our results were consistent with experimental predictions, which may support the validity of the ARC model. The sequential effect accompanied by dip modulation of ER-DBA waveforms suggests that cognitive cost is saved while maintaining cognitive performance in accordance with the framework of the ARC based on 1-bit congruency-dependent selective control.

The Cognitive Cost of Repetitive Thinking: A Study on the Effects of Shifting and Updating on Rumination of Emotional Experiences.

The present study aimed to investigate the consequence of resource competition between post-emotional processing and concurrent cognitive tasks. Previous studies have shown that such a resource competition engenders both short-term (e.g., defeats in the execution of the working memory task) and long-term effects (e.g., procrastination or rumination following an emotional experience). We expected these effects to vary as a function of the different WM components involved (shifting, Study 1; updating, Study 2). In two studies, participants (Study 1: N = 48; Study 2: N = 42) were administered one out of two variants of a visuospatial task (Study 1: shifting; Study 2: updating) adopted by Curci and colleagues before and after a negative or neutral manipulation. Rumination was assessed immediately after the second WM task performance and 24 h later. In Study 1, results showed that the exposure to negative content impaired the subsequent executive performance compared with exposure to neutral material, while no difference was found in Study 2. Rumination for emotional material was higher and more persistent over time as a function of shifting resources but not for updating ones. These findings provide information on the possible role of individuals' cognitive resources on rumination for emotional experiences.

The effect of affordance on deliberation when retweeting: From the perspective of expression effect

Well-designed social media are supposed to improve user deliberation. Around the 2020 US presidential election, Twitter temporarily suspended the Retweet function and prompted users to use the Quote Tweet function. This study aims to use this natural experiment condition to examine whether this affordance change can increase users' deliberation levels by encouraging them to express themselves. From the expression effect perspective, this change might increase the cognitive costs of users' retweeting and commenting behaviors and thus lead to deliberativeness. Based on this natural experiment, the study found that at the population level, the suspension of the Retweet function made users spend more time before quoting. However, it did not encourage them to post quotation tweets of higher analytical and interactive quality or put more effort into writing longer comments and finding longer tweets to quote. These effects were moderated by users’ retweeting habits, as the change increased deliberativeness for those who used the quotation function frequently before the suspension.

5 Association of Discrimination to Cognition Among US-Born and Immigrant Latinx

Objective:Neuropsychology is in a nascent stage of understanding the mechanisms that link social forces, psychosocial experiences, and brain health. Discrimination is associated with lower quality of life, higher stress, and worse physical health outcomes in Latinx, but contradictory findings in prior research complicate our understanding of its relationship to cognition. These contradictory results may be explained by heterogeneity within the broad category of Latinx, a cultural identity that requires more nuanced conceptualization. Immigration status is a primary social identifier for Latinx people that carries significant stigma. However, prior research found enculturation promotes better physical and mental health outcomes in immigrants compared to their US-born counterparts, which may protect immigrant Latinx from the cognitive costs of discrimination. The current study hypothesized that the effect of discrimination on cognition will be stronger in US-born Latinx compared to immigrant Latinx.Participants and Methods:We partnered with 1,023 neurologically healthy, community dwelling Latinx adults (M age=56.1(±10.7); M education=12.5(±3.7); 69% women) in a prospective cohort study in NYC investigating risks factors for Alzheimer’s disease. Immigration status was determined by self-report of birthplace. Measures of attention, language, and memory were administered by bilingual examiners in the participants’ self-selected preferred language of English (n = 388) or Spanish (n=635). Discrimination, measured with the Everyday Discrimination Scale and Major Experiences of Discrimination Scale, was chronicity coded to weigh experiences of discrimination according to yearly chronicity. Linear regression models were employed for US-born and immigrant participants to assess the relationship between both discrimination measures and each cognitive measure.Results:Compared to US-born Latinx (n = 224), immigrant Latinx (n = 799; primarily from the Dominican Republic) were older, had fewer years of school, had lower income, and were much more likely to have chosen to be assessed in Spanish. Immigrants reported experiencing significantly fewer everyday and major experiences of discrimination than nonimmigrants. In unadjusted models, discrimination did not predict cognitive performance among US-born Latinx. Among immigrant Latinx, more major experiences of discrimination across the lifetime predicted better phonemic (F(2,362) = 4.167, p<0.05, R2=0.017) and semantic fluency (F(2,362) = 3.304, p<0.05, R2=0.013) but was not associated with measures of attention or memory.Conclusions:Discrimination is an important life stressor for Latinx people living in the US, particularly when its impact is summed across intersectional identities. The current study is among the first to explore the potential cognitive impact of discrimination within a group of Latinx adults. The described relationship between discrimination and language performance in this cohort may be confounded by the language in which cognitive tests were administered. Future studies should consider how discrimination measures may be limited in their ability to accurately capture the experiences of US-born and immigrant Latinx groups and expand the measurement of cognition to additional domains.

29 Regulate to Remember: Cognitive Reappraisal Ability Impacts Prospective Memory Performance

Objective:Emotion regulation is generally thought of as the process of overriding one's initial emotional response to personally relevant events. One frequently investigated type of emotion regulation is cognitive reappraisal, which describes one's ability to cognitively alter the meaning of an event. Cognitive reappraisal is associated with better cognitive, social, and health outcomes compared to other emotion regulation strategies. The cognitive building blocks of cognitive reappraisal are related to executive cognitive control processes, which broadly describe one's ability to engage in non-automatic and goal-oriented behaviors. Crucially, executive control processes are also relevant in demanding cognitive tasks such as prospective memory since, similarly to cognitive reappraisal, they involve effortful and purpose driven efforts. However, cognitive reappraisal has thus far not been investigated regarding prospective memory performance despite findings that suggest that emotionally evocative stimuli improve prospective memory performance. The present study investigated whether cognitive reappraisal state and trait measures as well as other types of emotion regulation strategies are associated with prospective memory accuracy of negatively valenced prospective memory targets.Participants and Methods:A total of 45 participants (69% women; M = 22.62 years, SD = 5.69 years) took part in this cross-sectional study. Cognitive reappraisal and prospective memory tasks were administered on the computer. A total of 106 pictures were shown in the prospective memory task, including 12 prospective memory hits. A 2-back paradigm was used as the effortful ongoing task. Dependent measures included accuracy of and reaction times to negative prospective memory hits. A total of 45 pictures were shown in the cognitive reappraisal task. Participants were asked to decrease their negative emotions when looking at previously normed negatively valenced pictures versus merely looking at them (Lang et al., 2001). Dependent measures in the cognitive reappraisal task included success of downregulating negative emotion after the DECREASE versus LOOK instruction. A mood manipulation check and a questionnaire asking about participants' reappraisal strategies was conducted. Trait based measures of emotion regulation included the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and the Dysfunction of Emotion Regulation Scale.Results:Participants endorsed significantly higher negative mood after looking at negative versus neutral pictures, t(48) = 22.77, p , .05). Ratings further indicated that participants were able to significantly decrease how negative they felt when reappraising versus looking at negative pictures, t(44) = 12.82, p , .05. Regarding the relationship between prospective memory accuracy of negatively valanced prospective memory targets and cognitive reappraisal ability, no significant bivariate correlation was found (p > .05). However, a significant bivariate correlation was found between reaction times to negatively valenced prospective memory targets and cognitive reappraisal ability (rs = -.32, p = .03). No significant relationship was observed between prospective memory accuracy of or reaction times to negatively valenced prospective memory targets and trait based measures of emotion regulation (all ps > .05).Conclusions:Hypotheses were partly supported. Higher state-based cognitive reappraisal abilities may be associated with lower cognitive costs when asked to remember negatively evocative pictures and/or higher overall cognitive capacity. The importance of assessing emotion regulation when utilizing emotionally evocative stimuli and their clinical significant is discussed.

Rational Simplification and Rigidity in Human Planning.

Planning underpins the impressive flexibility of goal-directed behavior. However, even when planning, people can display surprising rigidity in how they think about problems (e.g., "functional fixedness") that lead them astray. How can our capacity for behavioral flexibility be reconciled with our susceptibility to conceptual inflexibility? We propose that these tendencies reflect avoidance of two cognitive costs: the cost of representing task details and the cost of switching between representations. To test this hypothesis, we developed a novel paradigm that affords participants opportunities to choose different families of simplified representations to plan. In two preregistered, online studies (Ns = 377 and 294 adults), we found that participants' optimal behavior, suboptimal behavior, and reaction time were explained by a computational model that formalized people's avoidance of representational complexity and switching. These results demonstrate how the selection of simplified, rigid representations leads to the otherwise puzzling combination of flexibility and inflexibility observed in problem solving.

Practice reduces the costs of producing head fakes in basketball

Previous research indicates that performing passes with a head fake in basketball leads to increased response initiation times and errors as compared to performing a pass without a head fake. These so-called fake production costs only occurred when not given the time to mentally prepare the deceptive movement. In the current study, we investigated if extensive practice could reduce the cognitive costs of producing a pass with head fake. Twenty-four basketball novices participated in an experiment on five consecutive days. A visual cue prompted participants to play a pass with or without a head fake either to the left or right side. The cued action had to be executed after an interstimulus interval (ISI) of either 0 ms, 400 ms, 800 ms or 1200 ms, allowing for different movement preparation times. Results indicated higher response initiation times (ITs) and error rates (ERs) for passes with head fakes for the short preparation intervals (ISI 0 ms and 400 ms) on the first day but no difference for the longer preparation intervals (ISI 800 ms and 1200 ms). After only one day of practice, participants showed reduced fake production costs (for ISI 0 ms) and were even able to eliminate these cognitive costs when given time to mentally prepare the movement (for ISI 400 ms). Accordingly, physical practice can reduce the cognitive costs associated with head-fake generation. This finding is discussed against the background of the strengthening of stimulus response associations.

Comparison of Experienced and Novice Drivers' Visual and Driving Behaviors during Warned or Unwarned Near-Forward Collisions.

Forward collision warning systems (FCWSs) monitor the road ahead and warn drivers when the time to collision reaches a certain threshold. Using a driving simulator, this study compared the effects of FCWSs between novice drivers (unlicensed drivers) and experienced drivers (holding a driving license for at least four years) on near-collision events, as well as visual and driving behaviors. The experimental drives lasted about six hours spread over six consecutive weeks. Visual behaviors (e.g., mean number of fixations) and driving behaviors (e.g., braking reaction times) were collected during unprovoked near-collision events occurring during a car-following task, with (FCWS group) or without FCWS (No Automation group). FCWS presence reduced the number of near-collision events drastically and enhanced visual behaviors during those events. Unexpectedly, brake reaction times were observed to be significantly longer with FCWS, suggesting a cognitive cost associated with the warning process. Still, the FCWS showed a slight safety benefit for novice drivers attributed to the assistance provided for the situation analysis. Outside the warning events, FCWS presence also impacted car-following behaviors. Drivers took an extra safety margin, possibly to prevent incidental triggering of warnings. The data enlighten the nature of the cognitive processes associated with FCWSs. Altogether, the findings support the general efficiency of FCWSs observed through a massive reduction in the number of near-collision events and point toward the need for further investigations.

The cognitive cost of deriving implicature: A reaction-time study

If A asks B “Do you like berries?”, and B replies “I like some berries,” B would infer that A does not like all kinds of berries. Such inference derived by negating the stronger alternative (all) is known as the scalar implicature (SI). Earlier experimental studies showed that computation of SI requires additional processing time compared to literal interpretation, and hence they argued that derivation of implicature is cost-demanding. Some recent experiments, however, found that derivation of implicature does not require any additional processing cost. The present study re-examines the comprehension of implicature using a Truth Value Judgement task. The hypothesis of this study is that the computation of implicature is as immediate as the computation of literal meaning if the sentences are preceded by prior context and communicative intent as in real conversation. The study uses a two-between-subject design where 32 native English speakers were required to read a ‘context’, followed by a ‘question’ and an ‘answer’. The context followed by the question either demanded the lower-bounded ‘literal’ meaning or the upper-bounded ‘pragmatic’ meaning of the under-informative answers which is the implicature. The result indicates that when a prior context and a clear communicative intent guide the hearer toward the intended meaning, both literal and pragmatic meaning comprehension is immediate. The result certainly indicates against the Default Inference accounts, but it also opposes the Literal-first hypothesis of the Contextualist school. The result strongly supports the Constraint-Based account of implicature derivation and brings additional support to the studies which argue for immediate implicature computation.

Children’s use of reasoning by exclusion to infer objects’ identities in working memory

Reasoning by exclusion allows us to form more complete representations of our environments, “filling in” inaccessible information by ruling out known alternatives. In two experiments (Experiment 1: N = 34 4- to 6-year-olds; Experiment 2: N = 85 4- to 8-year-olds), we examined children’s ability to use reasoning by exclusion to infer the identity of an unknown object and investigated the role of working memory in this ability. Children were asked to encode a set of objects that were then hidden, and after a brief retention interval children were asked to select the identity of the object hidden in one of the locations from two alternatives. On some trials, all the images were visible during encoding, so selecting the correct identity when probed required successful working memory storage and retrieval. On other trials, all but one of the images was visible during encoding, so selecting the correct identity when probed also required maintaining a representation of an unknown object in working memory and then using reasoning by exclusion to fill in the missing information retroactively to complete that representation by ruling out known alternatives. To investigate the working memory cost of exclusive reasoning, we manipulated the working memory demands of the task. Our results suggest that children can use reasoning by exclusion to retroactively assign an identity to an incomplete object representation at least by 4 years of age but that this ability incurs some cognitive cost, which eases with development. These results provide new insights into children’s representational capacities and on the foundational building blocks of fully developed exclusive reasoning.

Vagueness, Double Consciousness, and the Criminal Law: A Cognitive History

This Article identifies and historically situates “vague conduct prohibitions,” a type of criminal law that requires racialized or otherwise marginalized individuals to anticipate the inferences that a stranger or law enforcement officer would draw about their intentions. All of us—especially those of us who live in dense cities and encounter hundreds of strangers every day—need to expend some cognitive labor on routine mindreading to anticipate others’ movements, accommodate others’ needs, avoid potentially dangerous situations, and coordinate small-scale social interactions. From the Black Codes to vagrancy laws to contemporary stop-and-frisk police practices, white Americans have used vague conduct prohibitions to defray the cognitive costs of everyday mindreading by raising the stakes for any mind misreading by Black Americans. In other words, by threatening criminal consequences for Black citizens if their actions are misunderstood by whites, vague conduct prohibitions shift the mindreading burden in routine social interactions.

The Effect of Cognitive Task, Gait Speed, and Age on Cognitive-Motor Interference during Walking.

Dual-tasking can cause cognitive-motor interference (CMI) and affect task performance. This study investigated the effects of age, gait speed, and type of cognitive task on CMI during gait. Ten younger and 10 older adults walked on a pressure-sensitive GAITRite walkway which recorded gait speed and step length. Participants walked at a slow, preferred, or fast speed while simultaneously completing four cognitive tasks: visuomotor reaction time (VMRT), serial subtraction (SS), word list generation (WLG), and visual Stroop (VS). Each combination of task and speed was repeated for two trials. Tasks were also performed while standing. Motor and cognitive costs were calculated with the formula: ((single-dual)/single × 100). Higher costs indicate a larger reduction in performance from single to dual-task. Motor costs were higher for WLG and SS than VMRT and VS and higher in older adults (p < 0.05). Cognitive costs were higher for SS than WLG (p = 0.001). At faster speeds, dual-task costs increased for WLG and SS, although decreased for VMRT. CMI was highest for working memory, language, and problem-solving tasks, which was reduced by slow walking. Aging increased CMI, although both ages were affected similarly by task and speed. Dual-task assessments could include challenging CMI conditions to improve the prediction of motor and cognitive status.

The Cognitive Costs of Design Tasks: Examining Cognitive Load Through Verbal and Physical Indicators

Abstract Prior work has demonstrated that design tasks can be cognitively demanding, due to the inherent ambiguity and complexity of design problems. Few studies, however, have examined the evolution of cognitive load during the engineering design process and the linkages between subdimensions of cognitive load and design task outcomes. To address this gap, the current work investigates the evolution of cognitive load across two distinct design tasks: ideation and prototyping, and the relationship between cognitive load and design task outcomes. Results suggest that there is a significant difference in cognitive load experienced by the designer during ideation and prototyping. Additionally, findings suggest that cognitive load during ideation is positively correlated with the uniqueness, usefulness, and elegance of ideas.

Boosting serotonin increases information gathering by reducing subjective cognitive costs.

Serotonin is implicated in the valuation of aversive costs, such as delay or physical effort. However, its role in governing sensitivity to cognitive effort, for example deliberation costs during information gathering, is unclear. We show that treatment with a serotonergic antidepressant in healthy human individuals of either sex enhances a willingness to gather information when trying to maximize reward. Using computational modelling, we show this arises from a diminished sensitivity to subjective deliberation costs during the sampling process. This result is consistent with the notion that serotonin alleviates sensitivity to aversive costs in a domain-general fashion, with implications for its potential contribution to a positive impact on motivational deficits in psychiatric disorders.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT:Gathering information about the world is essential for successfully navigating it. However, sampling information is costly, and we need to balance between gathering too little and too much information. The neurocomputational mechanisms underlying this arbitration between a putative gain, such as reward, and the associated costs, such as allocation of cognitive resources, remain unclear. In this study, we show that week-long daily treatment with a serotonergic antidepressant enhances a willingness to gather information when trying to maximize reward. Computational modelling indicates this arises from a reduced perception of aversive costs, rendering information gathering less cognitively effortful. This finding points to a candidate mechanism by which serotonergic treatment might help alleviate motivational deficits in a range of mental illnesses.

Metaphor processing: Referring and predicating

The general consensus emerging from decades of empirical investigation of metaphor processing is that, when appropriately contextualised, metaphorically used language is no more demanding of processing effort than literally used language. However, there is a small number of studies which contradict this position, notably Noveck, Bianco, and Castry (2001): they maintain that relevance-based pragmatic theory predicts increased cognitive costs incurred in deriving the extra effects that metaphors typically yield, and they provide experimental results that support this prediction. In our study, we first surveyed and assessed the tasks and stimulus materials of many experiments on metaphor processing from the 1970's to the present day. The most telling result was an apparent disparity between the processing of metaphorical language used predicatively versus referentially. We then ran two self-paced reading experiments to test our hypothesis that when used as a predicate, metaphorical language is no more costly than literal language, but when used referentially, it does incur extra costs, even given a preceding biasing context. In the first experiment, all metaphorical referring expressions were in subject position so occurred early in the sentence; in the second experiment, we controlled for any effect of sentence position by placing metaphorical referring expressions in object position, thus later in the sentence, similar to the predicate metaphors. In both cases, metaphorical referring incurred significantly greater costs relative to literal equivalents than did metaphorical predication, with no effect of sentence position. We end with a brief analysis of why the referential use of metaphor is special and effort-demanding.

Strategic Task Decomposition in Joint Action.

The core of human cooperation is people's ability to perform joint actions. Frequently, this requires effectively decomposing a joint task into individual subtasks, for example, when jointly shopping at the market to buy food. Surprisingly, little is known about how collaborators balance the costs of establishing a joint strategy for such decompositions and its expected benefits for a joint goal. We created a new online task that required pairs of randomly matched participants to jointly collect colored items. We then systematically varied the cognitive costs and benefits of applying a color-splitting strategy. The results showed that pairs adopted a color-splitting strategy more often when necessary to lower cognitive costs. However, once the strategy was jointly adopted, it continued to be used even when the cost-benefits changed. Our results provide first insights on how people decompose joint tasks into individual components and how decomposition strategies may evolve into conventions.

Integrating Cognition Cost With Reliability QoS for Dynamic Workflow Scheduling Using Reinforcement Learning

The rapid rise of microservice architecture poses severe challenges to workflow scheduling, resource allocation, and goal optimization. However, faults and failures usually happen during workflow running. To ensure the workflow's successful execution during scheduling microservices, this paper proposes a dynamic workflow scheduling algorithm by integrating cognition cost and reliability QoS for using reinforcement learning (WS-CCR). Firstly, we explore the ‘restart policy’ of containers in the Kubernetes architecture, which lays the foundation for our work that adopts the redundancy strategy to ensure workflow operation. Then we consider the cognitive cost based on the fact that users have a cognitive process for different microservices in selecting microservices. Additionally, another optimization goal is the reliability of workflows. On this basis, we design a reasonable reward function in reinforcement learning to generate dynamic strategies. Furthermore, following some generated strategies, our engine will schedule candidate microservices for tasks to execute step by step. A series of experiments on Alibaba and business areas workflows have proven the superior performance of our algorithm. Our WS-CCR can generate better Pareto solution sets than other baselines in terms of improving the reliability of running workflows. Finally, we give a case study to prove the practicability of our method.

Mapping models in novel metaphors and their effect on gaze behavior and default interpretations in native and target languages

In the study, we address the problem of existing differences in reading and understanding novel metaphors in the text fragments in native and target languages (L1 and L2), with these differences potentially attributed to both the specifics of forming analogies in native and target languages, and the mapping characteristics of metaphors. The study identifies the contingency effects of several primary metaphors onto the gaze behavior and default interpretation of textual novel metaphors in L1 (Russian) and L2 (English). To proceed, we use the text fragments in L1 and L2 containing novel metaphors appearing in more and less focal syntactic positions in a two-stage oculographic experiment. We obtain the participants’ gaze metrics values and the participants’ responses specifying the target domains of the novel metaphors, which further allows us to disclose the contingencies. Methodologically, the study is grounded in the metaphor processing theories developed in cognitive psychology, which explore the structure of analogical reasoning and associative fluency as manifesting potentially different effects in L1 and L2. To validate it, we also address the cognitive linguistic theories which provide the framework for identifying the primary metaphor models (here the models PATIENT (OBJECT) IS AGENT, PARTS ARE WHOLE, CONCRETE IS ABSTRACT) and for testing their effect onto information construal. We hypothesize that reading and understanding metaphors will proceed differently in L1 and L2, which is attributed to associative fluency in metaphor mapping in native and target languages. The experiment results do not show the differences in understanding the mapping model PATIENT (OBJECT) IS AGENT in L1 and L2, whereas these differences appear in understanding the models PARTS ARE WHOLE and CONCRETE IS ABSTRACT with higher default interpretation index in L1. The model PATIENT (OBJECT) IS AGENT is also found to stimulate higher gaze costs. The results suffice to claim that there are differences in the cognitive costs produced by primary metaphor models, which allows us to range and specify their role in information construal in L1 and L2.

The effects of factors on the motivations for knowledge sharing in online health communities: A benefit-cost perspective.

Online health communities (OHCs) provide knowledge for users, enabling conversations across a broad range of health topics. The development of OHCs depends on users' motivations to share health knowledge. Yet little literature has explored how perceived benefits and costs affect users' motivations for sharing both general and specific knowledge. Based on social exchange theory, we propose a research model that comprises intrinsic benefits (sense of self-worth, satisfaction), extrinsic benefits (social support, reputation, and online attention), cognitive cost, and executional cost to investigate the effects of these factors on users' motivations for general and specific knowledge sharing. We compare the different effects of these factors on users' motivations for knowledge sharing. Results demonstrate positive effects of intrinsic and extrinsic benefits on users' motivations for general and specific knowledge sharing. Differences exist in the negative effects of cognitive and executional costs on users' motivations for general and specific knowledge sharing. This study contributes to promoting the enrichment of online health knowledge and provides implications for the development of OHCs.