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Is it cognitive effort you measure? Comparing three task paradigms to the Need for Cognition scale.

ABSTRACT: Measuring individual differences in cognitive effort can be elusive as effort is a function of motivation and ability. We report six studies (N = 663) investigating the relationship of Need for Cognition and working memory capacity with three cognitive effort measures: demand avoidance in the Demand Selection Task, effort discounting measured as the indifference point in the Cognitive Effort Discounting paradigm, and rational reasoning score with items from the heuristic and bias literature. We measured perceived mental effort with the NASA task load index. The three tasks were not correlated with each other (all r's < .1, all p's > .1). Need for Cognition was positively associated with effort discounting (r = .168, p < .001) and rational reasoning (r = .176, p < .001), but not demand avoidance (r = .085, p = .186). Working memory capacity was related to effort discounting (r = .185, p = .004). Higher perceived effort was related to poorer rational reasoning. Our data indicate that two of the tasks are related to Need for Cognition but are also influenced by a participant's working memory capacity. We discuss whether any of the tasks measure cognitive effort.

SUBMITTER: Mækelæ MJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10434945 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Is it cognitive effort you measure? Comparing three task paradigms to the Need for Cognition scale.

Mækelæ Martin Jensen MJ Klevjer Kristoffer K Westbrook Andrew A Eby Noah S NS Eriksen Rikke R Pfuhl Gerit G

PloS one 20230817 8

Measuring individual differences in cognitive effort can be elusive as effort is a function of motivation and ability. We report six studies (N = 663) investigating the relationship of Need for Cognition and working memory capacity with three cognitive effort measures: demand avoidance in the Demand Selection Task, effort discounting measured as the indifference point in the Cognitive Effort Discounting paradigm, and rational reasoning score with items from the heuristic and bias literature. We ...[more]

PMID: 37590223

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Project description:Purpose Listening effort is quickly becoming an important metric for assessing speech perception in less-than-ideal situations. However, the relationship between the construct of listening effort and the measures used to assess it remains unclear. We compared two measures of listening effort: a cognitive dual task and a physiological pupillometry task. We sought to investigate the relationship between these measures of effort and whether engaging effort impacts speech accuracy. Method In Experiment 1, 30 participants completed a dual task and a pupillometry task that were carefully matched in stimuli and design. The dual task consisted of a spoken word recognition task and a visual match-to-sample task. In the pupillometry task, pupil size was monitored while participants completed a spoken word recognition task. Both tasks presented words at three levels of listening difficulty (unmodified, eight-channel vocoding, and four-channel vocoding) and provided response feedback on every trial. We refined the pupillometry task in Experiment 2 (n = 31); crucially, participants no longer received response feedback. Finally, we ran a new group of subjects on both tasks in Experiment 3 (n = 30). Results In Experiment 1, accuracy in the visual task decreased with increased signal degradation in the dual task, but pupil size was sensitive to accuracy and not vocoding condition. After removing feedback in Experiment 2, changes in pupil size were predicted by listening condition, suggesting the task was now sensitive to engaged effort. Both tasks were sensitive to listening difficulty in Experiment 3, but there was no relationship between the tasks and neither task predicted speech accuracy. Conclusions Consistent with previous work, we found little evidence for a relationship between different measures of listening effort. We also found no evidence that effort predicts speech accuracy, suggesting that engaging more effort does not lead to improved speech recognition. Cognitive and physiological measures of listening effort are likely sensitive to different aspects of the construct of listening effort. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16455900.

Project description:Purpose Pupillary responses captured via pupillometry (measurement of pupillary dilation and constriction during the performance of a cognitive task) are psychophysiological indicators of cognitive effort, attention, arousal, and resource engagement. Pupillometry may be a promising tool for enhancing our understanding of the relationship between cognition and language in people with and without aphasia. Interpretation of pupillary responses is complex. This study was designed as a stepping-stone for future pupillometric studies involving people with aphasia. Asking comprehension questions is common in language processing research involving people with and without aphasia. However, the influence of comprehension questions on pupillometric indices of task engagement (tonic responses) and cognitive effort (task-evoked responses of the pupil [TERPs]) is unknown. We tested whether asking comprehension questions influenced pupillometric results of adults without aphasia during a syntactic processing task. Method Forty adults without aphasia listened to easy (canonical) and difficult (noncanonical) sentences in two conditions: one that contained an explicit comprehension task (question condition) and one that did not (no-question condition). The influence of condition and canonicity on pupillary responses was examined. Results The influence of canonicity was only significant in the question condition: TERPs for difficult sentences were larger than TERPs for easy sentences. Tonic responses did not differ between conditions. Conclusions Although participants had similar levels of attentiveness in both conditions, increases in indices of cognitive effort during syntactic processing were significant only when participants expected comprehension questions. Results contribute to a body of evidence indicating the importance of task design and careful linguistic stimulus control when using pupillometry to study language processing. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13480368.

Dataset Information

Is it cognitive effort you measure? Comparing three task paradigms to the Need for Cognition scale.

Publications

Is it cognitive effort you measure? Comparing three task paradigms to the Need for Cognition scale.

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