A Computational Analysis of Cognitive Effort

Cognitive effort is a concept of unquestionable utility in understanding human behaviour. However, cognitive effort has been defined in several ways in literature and in everyday life, suffering from a partial understanding. It is common to say "Pay more attention in studying that subject" or "How much effort did you spend in resolving that task?", but what does it really mean? This contribution tries to clarify the concept of cognitive effort, by introducing its main influencing factors and by presenting a formalism which provides us with a tool for precise discussion. The formalism is implementable as a computational concept and can therefore be embedded in an artificial agent and tested experimentally. Its applicability in the domain of AI is raised and the formalism provides a step towards a proper understanding and definition of human cognitive effort.

[1]  Murray R. Barrick,et al.  Conscientiousness and performance of sales representatives: Test of the mediating effects of goal setting. , 1993 .

[2]  F. Thomas Eggemeier,et al.  Workload assessment methodology. , 1986 .

[3]  Yitzhak Fried,et al.  Enriching Goal-Setting Theory with Time: An Integrated Approach , 2004 .

[4]  Daniel G Bobrow,et al.  On data-limited and resource-limited processes , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[5]  Jan Vos,et al.  A flexible sigmoid function of determinate growth. , 2003, Annals of botany.

[6]  T. Salthouse.  When does age-related cognitive decline begin? , 2009, Neurobiology of Aging.

[7]  Roger W. Schvaneveldt,et al.  Modeling Mental Workload , 1997 .

[8]  J. Farris.  CONJECTURES AND REFUTATIONS , 1995, Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society.

[9]  M. Humphreys,et al.  Personality, motivation, and performance: a theory of the relationship between individual differences and information processing. , 1984, Psychological review.

[10]  E. A. Locke.  Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives , 1968 .

[11]  W. B. Pillsbury.  Lectures or the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention , 1909 .

[12]  J. Carroll.  Human Cognitive Abilities-a sur-vey of factor-analytic studies , 1993 .

[13]  Gary James Jason,et al.  The Logic of Scientific Discovery , 1988 .

[14]  Jan Vos,et al.  Erratum: A flexible sigmoid function of determinate growth (Annals of Botany (2003) 91 (361-371)) , 2003 .

[15]  W. Dickens,et al.  Cognitive Ability , 2020, Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences.

[16]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Attention and Effort , 1973 .

[17]  V. Vroom.  Work and motivation , 1964 .

[18]  Craig J. Russell,et al.  Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling to Examine Dynamic Performance Criteria Over Time , 1997 .

[19]  Michael C. Pyryt.  Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor analytic studies , 1998 .

[20]  P. Karoly.  Mechanisms of Self-Regulation: A Systems View , 1993 .

[21]  N. Moray,et al.  Signal-detection theory applied to selective listening. , 1967, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[22]  Gillian B. Yeo,et al.  Subjective cognitive effort: a model of states, traits, and time. , 2008, The Journal of applied psychology.

[23]  C. Carver,et al.  On the Self-Regulation of Behavior , 1998 .