ArticleNature communications2021
Expectations of reward and efficacy guide cognitive control allocation.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 94 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
94 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cognitive control training with domain-general response inhibition does not change children's brains or behavior.Nature neuroscience · 2024Trial
- Effects of Self-Efficacy and Outcome Expectations on Motor Imagery-Induced Thermal and Mechanical Hypoalgesia: A Single-Blind Randomised Controlled Trial.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Trial
- Effort Mobilization and Lapses of Sustained Attention.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2022Trial
- Trial
- Motivation to exert effort dynamically adapts to reward context and environmental controllability.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Who is to blame? Outcome controllability and error attribution differentially shape cognitive preparation and feedback evaluation.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Automatic value learning results in counterproductive human behavior.Nature communications · 2026Article
- How Outcome Framing and Feedback Influence Decision Patterns over Time.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Control adjustment costs limit goal flexibility: Empirical evidence and a computational account.Psychological review · 2026Article
- Phase-tuned modulation during reward expectancy in human anterior insular cortex.Communications biology · 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
- The neurocomputational mechanisms underlying the impact of social comparison on effort investment.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Integrating arousal and valence approaches to advance cognitive effort research.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- 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
- Inefficient integration between effort and reward in anhedonia.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Understanding human metacontrol and its pathologies using deep neural networks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Pupil size response within direct and random exploration and exploitation behaviors selectively reflects value of control.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Neural evidence of task efficacy affecting cognitive control in test-anxious individuals.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Do real or hypothetical rewards facilitate creative performance? The effect of reward on creative problem solving.Psychological research · 2025Article
34 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
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The amount of mental effort we invest in a task is influenced by the reward we can expect if we perform that task well. However, some of the rewards that have the greatest potential for driving these efforts are partly determined by factors beyond one's control. In such cases, effort has more limited efficacy for obtaining rewards. According to the Expected Value of Control theory, people integrate information about the expected reward and efficacy of task performance to determine the expected value of control, and then adjust their control allocation (i.e., mental effort) accordingly. Here we test this theory's key behavioral and neural predictions. We show that participants invest more cognitive control when this control is more rewarding and more efficacious, and that these incentive components separately modulate EEG signatures of incentive evaluation and proactive control allocation. Our findings support the prediction that people combine expectations of reward and efficacy to determine how much effort to invest.
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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.