Judgments of effort depend on the temporal proximity to the task

Abstract

Cognitive effort is a central construct in our lives, yet our understanding of the processes underlying our perception of effort are limited. Performance is typically used as one way to assess effort in cognitive tasks (e.g., tasks that take longer are generally thought to be more effortful); however, Dunn and Risko (2016) reported a recent case where such “objective” measures of effort were dissociated from judgments of effort (i.e., subjective effort). This dissociation occurred when participants either made their judgments of effort after the task (i.e., reading stimuli composed of rotated words) or without ever performing the task. This leaves open the possibility that if participants made their judgments of effort closer in time to the actual experience of performing the task (e.g., right after a given trial) that these judgments might better correspond to putatively “objective” measures of effort. To address this question, we conducted two experiments replicating Dunn and Risko (2016) with additional probes for immediate judgments of effort (i.e., a judgment of effort made right after each trial). Results provided some support for the notion that judgments of effort more closely follow reading times when made immediately after reading. Implications of the present work for our understanding of judgments of effort are discussed.