Definition
Effort is derived from the French word meaning “to force.” Today, it is widely used to refer to the expenditure of energy (i.e., work) to achieve a particular goal. Within psychology, effort refers to controlled attention or intentional processing that is required to complete demanding tasks that require intense attentional focus or sustained performance.
Historical Background
Effort was one of the subjective experiences that psychologists of the early twentieth century tried to account for as they contemplated the nature of consciousness, attention, intention, and “will.” James (1890) in his Principles of Psychology and lectures to teachers on attention distinguished between spontaneous passive attention and voluntary attention, which is “deliberate and effortful.” He stated that deliberate attention could not be sustained indefinitely, thus linking attentional effort to the idea that people have limited capacity for sustained attention.
Kahneman (1973) formalized the...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References and Readings
Byrne, D. G. (1977). Affect and vigilance performance in depressive illness. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 13, 185–191.
Cohen, R., Lohr, I., Paul, R., & Boland, R. (2001). Impairments of attention and effort among patients with major affective disorders. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 13, 385–395.
Cohen, R. A. (2014) Neuropsychology of attention (2nd ed.). New York: Springer
Garavan, H., Ross, T. J., Murphy, K., Roche, R. A., & Stein, E. A. (2002). Dissociable executive functions in the dynamic control of behavior: Inhibition, error detection, and correction. NeuroImage, 17, 1820–1829.
Grier, R. A., Warm, J. S., Dember, W. N., Matthews, G., Galinsky, T. L., Szalma, J. L., et al. (2003). The vigilance decrement reflects limitations in effortful attention, not mindlessness. Human Factors, 45, 349–359.
Hagen, J. W. (1967). The effect of distraction on selective attention. Child Development, 38, 685–694.
Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. (1979). Automatic and effortful processes in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108(3), 356–388.
Hester, R., D’Esposito, M., Cole, M. W., & Garavan, H. (2007). Neural mechanisms for response selection: Comparing selection of responses and items from working memory. NeuroImage, 34, 446–454.
Hitchcock, E. M., Warm, J. S., Matthews, G., Dember, W. N., Shear, P. K., Tripp, L. D., et al. (2003). Automation cueing modulates cerebral blood flow and vigilance in a simulated air traffic control task. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 4, 89–112.
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: H. Holt and Company.
Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Kahneman, D., Beatty, J., & Pollack, I. (1967). Perceptual deficit during a mental task. Science, 157, 218–219.
Koelega, H. S., Brinkman, J. A., Hendriks, L., & Verbaten, M. N. (1989). Processing demands, effort, and individual differences in four different vigilance tasks. Human Factors, 31, 45–62.
Kubler, A., Murphy, K., Kaufman, J., Stein, E. A., & Garavan, H. (2003). Co-ordination within and between verbal and visuospatial working memory: Network modulation and anterior frontal recruitment. NeuroImage, 20, 1298–1308.
Lawrence, N. S., Ross, T. J., Hoffmann, R., Garavan, H., & Stein, E. A. (2003). Multiple neuronal networks mediate sustained attention. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1028–1038.
Nuechterlein, K. H., Garmezy, N., Devine, V. T., Schulz, S. C., & Tamminga, C. A. (1989). Sustained, focused attention under high processing loads: Relevance to vulnerability to schizophrenia. Schizophrenia: Scientific progress (pp. 95–102). New York: Oxford University Press.
Parasuraman, R. (1979). Memory load and event rate control sensitivity decrements in sustained attention. Science, 205, 924–927.
Pribram, K. H., & McGuinness, D. (1975). Arousal, activation, and effort in the control of attention. Psychological Review, 82, 116–149.
Schneider, W., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: I. Detection, search, and attention. Psychological Review, 84(1), 1–66.
Shiffrin, R. M., & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending and a general theory. Psychological Review, 84(2), 127–190.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Cohen, R.A. (2018). Effort. In: Kreutzer, J.S., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57111-9_1296
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57111-9_1296
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57110-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57111-9
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences