ReviewNature human behaviour2018
Mental labour.
Review in Nature human behaviour, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 108 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
108 citing papers in PubMed.
- Noninvasive Brain Stimulation over the Frontopolar Cortex Promotes Willingness to Exert Cognitive Effort in a Foraging-Like Sequential Choice Task.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Trial
- Executive functions as a transdiagnostic endophenotype in developmental psychopathology.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
- Changing the motivation for mental work with temporal interference stimulation.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- A Hitchhiker's Guide to Physical and Cognitive Effort.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2026Review
- Neural and computational mechanisms of effort under the pressure of a deadline.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Mental cost of simple(st) physical exertion.Cognition · 2026Article
- Contributions of the basolateral amygdala and nucleus accumbens to sustaining not just initiating cognitive effort.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Empathy motivation is preserved following amygdala damage.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2026Article
- Understanding mechanisms of voluntary engagement of mental effort using active inference.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Computational underpinnings of cognitive effortful performance in short timescales.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Integrating arousal and valence approaches to advance cognitive effort research.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Temporal dynamics of effort discounting: The roles of cognitive load and depression.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Shared and distinct features of common effort-based decision-making paradigms and their relation to brain structure and neuropsychiatric conditions: An integrated narrative review.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Exerting effort for non-instrumental information under risk.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Competing cognitive pressures on human exploration in the absence of trade-off with exploitation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Deciding for others diminishes model-based decision-making but depends on individual prosociality.NPJ science of learning · 2026Article
- Playing With Matches: Preparatory Cognitive Processing Shapes Affective Evaluation.Journal of cognition · 2026Article
- Mapping affective pathways to compulsion: Insights from an aversive devaluation approach.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2025Article
- Tobacco deprivation impairs metacognitive accuracy and cognitive flexibility.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Reward masks the learning of cognitive control demand.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2025Article
48 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mental effort is an elementary notion in our folk psychology and a familiar fixture in everyday introspective experience. However, as an object of scientific study, mental effort has remained rather elusive. Cognitive psychology has provided some tools for understanding how effort impacts performance, by linking effort with cognitive control function. What has remained less clear are the principles that govern the allocation of mental effort. Under what circumstances do people choose to invest mental effort, and when do they decline to do so? And what regulates the intensity of mental effort when it is applied? In new and promising work, these questions are being approached with the tools of behavioural economics. Though still in its infancy, this economic approach to mental effort research has already uncovered important aspects of effort-based decision-making, and points clearly to future lines of inquiry, including some intriguing opportunities presented by recent artificial intelligence research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
30988433What OpenQuestion holds
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.