The opportunity cost of time modulates cognitive effort

Neuropsychologia
A Ross Otto, Nathaniel D Daw

Abstract

A spate of recent work demonstrates that humans seek to avoid the expenditure of cognitive effort, much like physical effort or economic resources. Less is clear, however, about the circumstances dictating how and when people decide to expend cognitive effort. Here we adopt a popular theory of opportunity costs and response vigor and to elucidate this question. This account, grounded in Reinforcement Learning, formalizes a trade-off between two costs: the harder work assumed necessary to emit faster actions and the opportunity cost inherent in acting more slowly (i.e., the delay that results to the next reward and subsequent rewards). Recent work reveals that the opportunity cost of time-operationalized as the average reward rate per unit time, theorized to be signaled by tonic dopamine levels, modulates the speed with which a person responds in a simple discrimination tasks. We extend this framework to cognitive effort in a diverse range of cognitive tasks, for which 1) the amount of cognitive effort demanded from the task varies from trial to trial and 2) the putative expenditure of cognitive effort holds measureable consequences in terms of accuracy and response time. In the domains of cognitive control, perceptual decision-...Continue Reading

Citations

Sep 13, 2020·Neuropsychopharmacology : Official Publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology·Lieke HofmansRoshan Cools
Aug 10, 2019·ELife·Florian BolenzBen Eppinger
Jul 11, 2020·Nature Communications·Neil Garrett, Nathaniel D Daw
Aug 29, 2018·The European Journal of Neuroscience·Monique H M TimmerRoshan Cools
Apr 17, 2019·Nature Human Behaviour·Wouter Kool, Matthew Botvinick
Oct 22, 2020·Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience·Kevin da Silva CastanheiraA Ross Otto
Aug 25, 2020·Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences·Gaia TavoniJoshua I Gold
Jan 29, 2021·Frontiers in Human Neuroscience·Mick SalomoneBruno Berberian
Feb 17, 2021·Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science·Alexa RuelBen Eppinger
Mar 25, 2021·PLoS Computational Biology·John G MikhaelSamuel J Gershman
May 20, 2021·Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Cognitive Science·Alexandre Y Dombrovski, Michael N Hallquist
May 29, 2021·Nature Human Behaviour·Pierre PetitetMasud Husain
Jun 29, 2021·Neuroscience·Chao Ciu-Gwok GuoJudith R Homberg
Jun 15, 2021·Trends in Cognitive Sciences·Andrew WestbrookRoshan Cools
Jul 6, 2021·Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences·Lindsay E Hunter, Nathaniel D Daw
Sep 1, 2021·Psychological Science·Mario BogdanovA Ross Otto
Nov 19, 2021·PloS One·Kevin da Silva CastanheiraA Ross Otto
Dec 29, 2021·PLoS Computational Biology·Xiamin LengAmitai Shenhav

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