ArticlePloS one2018
Mental effort and discomfort: Testing the peak-end effect during a cognitively demanding task.
Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT06968871 (Effects of the Ameliorated Pap Test on Cervical Cancer Screening Participation), which is not on this map. Cited by 8 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Effects of the Ameliorated Pap Test on Cervical Cancer Screening Participation: a Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Affective integration in climate change communication: recency effects and negativity bias in responses to climate picture sequences.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Dynamic versus static facial color changes: Evidence for terminal color dominance in expression recognition.Journal of vision · 2025Article
- The experience of mental effort during a continuous performance task: Exploring the influence of task- and person-based factors.PloS one · 2025Article
- The emotion filmmaker: Temporal memory, time-emotion integration, and affective style.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Article
- Calves peak-end memory of pain.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Comparing recalled versus experienced symptoms of breathlessness ratings: An ecological assessment study using mobile phone technology.Respirology (Carlton, Vic.) · 2022Article
- Effort-Related Decision-Making in ADHD.Journal of psychiatry and brain science · 2020Article
- An Integrative Model of Effortful Control.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We applied the peak-end paradigm that was first introduced in the pain literature to examine the experience of effort and discomfort during a cognitively demanding working memory task. A total of 401 participants were asked to rate their effort and discomfort during and after the administration of a working memory task, which systematically varied task difficulty within participants and task duration between participants. Over the course of the task, participants reported a decrease in reported effort and an increase in reported discomfort. Peak and end real-time ratings were significant predictors of retrospective ratings for effort and discomfort; average and initial ratings predicted a small amount of additional variance. The regression analyses with effort and discomfort were largely consistent, with some exceptions. End discomfort significantly predicted willingness to do the task again, but not end effort. These findings highlight the ways in which the experience of effort and discomfort are integrally related, yet importantly separate, during a cognitively demanding task.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.