Abstract
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.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Titchener, E.B.: Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention, p. 173. Macmillian, New York
Locke, E.A.: Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 3(2) (1968)
Vroom, V.H.: Work and Motivation. Wiley, New York (1964)
Fried, Y., Slowik, L.H.: Enriching goal-setting theory with time: An Integrated Approach. Academy Management Review 29(3), 404–422
Berlyne, D.E.: Conflict, Arousal and Curiosity. McGraw-Hill, New York (1960)
Kahneman, D.: Attention and Effort. Prentice Hall, NJ (1973)
Norman, D.A., Bobrow, D.B.: On Data-limited and Resource-limited Processes. Cognitive Psychology 7, 44–64 (1975)
Humphreys, M.S., Revelle, W.: Personality, Motivation and Performance: A Theory of the Relationship Between Individual Differences and Information Processing. Psychological Review 91(2) (1984)
Schvaneveldt, R.W., Reid, G.B., Gomez, R.L., Rice, S.: Modeling mental workload. Cognitive Technology, 3, 9–31 (March 1998)
Popper, K.R.: The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson (1967)
Popper, K.R.: Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge, New York (1969)
Moray, N., O’Brien, T.: Signal-detection theory applied to selective listening. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 42, 765–772
Deadrick, D.L., Bennet, N., Russel, C.J.: Using HLM to Examine Dynamic, Performance Criteria Over Time. Journal Management 23(6)
Carver, C.S., Scheiner, M.F.: On the Self-regulation of Behavior. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Karoly, P.: Mechanisms of Self-regulation: A Systems View. Annual Review of Psychology 44, 23–52
Yeo, G., Neal, A.: Subjective Cognitive Effort: a Model of States, Traits, and Time. Journal of Applied Psychology 93(3), 617–631 (2008)
Barrick, M.R., Mount, M.K., Strauss, J.P.: Conscientiousness and Performance of Sales Representatives: Test of the Mediating Effects of Goal Setting. Journal of Applied Psychology 78(5), 715–722
O’ Donnell, R.D., Eggemeier, F.T.: Workload Assessment Methodology. Cognitive Processes & Performance II, 1–49 (1986)
Dickens, T.W.: Cognitive Ability. In: Durlauf, S. (ed.) The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (forthcoming)
Carrroll, J.B.: Human Cognitive Abilities: A Survey of Factor-analytic Studies. Cambridge University Press, UK (1993)
Salthouse, T.: When does age-related cognitive decline begin? Journal of Neurobiology of Aging 30(4), 507–514 (2009)
Yin, X., Goudriaan, J., Lantinga, E.A., Vos, J., Spiertz, H.J.: A Flexible Sigmoid Function of Determinate Growth. Annals of Botany 91 (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Longo, L., Barrett, S. (2010). A Computational Analysis of Cognitive Effort. In: Nguyen, N.T., Le, M.T., Świątek, J. (eds) Intelligent Information and Database Systems. ACIIDS 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 5991. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12101-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12101-2_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-12100-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-12101-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)