Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38683857›Full record

ArticlePLoS computational biology2024

Wagers for work: Decomposing the costs of cognitive effort.

Sarah L Master, Clayton E Curtis, Peter Dayan

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PLoS computational biology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Review
  3. Article
  4. Trying Harder: How Cognitive Effort Sculpts Neural Representations during Working Memory.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024
    Article
  5. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Sarah L MasterDepartment of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America.ORCID 0000-0003-2726-4586
Clayton E CurtisDepartment of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America.
Peter DayanMax Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Deutschland.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Some aspects of cognition are more taxing than others. Accordingly, many people will avoid cognitively demanding tasks in favor of simpler alternatives. Which components of these tasks are costly, and how much, remains unknown. Here, we use a novel task design in which subjects request wages for completing cognitive tasks and a computational modeling procedure that decomposes their wages into the costs driving them. Using working memory as a test case, our approach revealed that gating new information into memory and protecting against interference are costly. Critically, other factors, like memory load, appeared less costly. Other key factors which may drive effort costs, such as error avoidance, had minimal influence on wage requests. Our approach is sensitive to individual differences, and could be used in psychiatric populations to understand the true underlying nature of apparent cognitive deficits.

Indexed as

CognitionMemory, Short-TermAdultComputational BiologyComputer SimulationFemaleHumansMaleTask Performance and AnalysisYoung Adult

Identifiers

PMID38683857
PMCPMC11081491

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.