Task-specific prioritization of reward and effort information: Novel insights from behavior and computational modeling

Abstract

Efficient integration of environmental information is critical in goal-directed behavior. Motivational information regarding potential rewards and costs (such as required effort) affects performance and decisions whether to engage in a task. While it is generally acknowledged that costs and benefits are integrated to determine the level of effort to be exerted, how this integration occurs remains an open question. Computational models of high-level cognition postulate serial processing of task-relevant features and demonstrate that prioritizing the processing of one feature over the other can affect performance. We investigated the hypothesis that motivationally relevant task features also may be processed serially, that people may prioritize either benefit or cost information, and that artificially controlling prioritization may be beneficial for performance (by improving task-accuracy) and decision-making (by boosting the willingness to engage in effortful trials). We manipulated prioritization by altering order of presentation of effort and reward cues in two experiments involving preparation for effortful performance and effort-based decision-making. We simulated the tasks with a recent model of prefrontal cortex (Alexander & Brown in Neural Computation, 27(11), 2354-2410, 2015). Human behavior was in line with model predictions: prioritizing reward vs. effort differentially affected performance vs. decision. Prioritizing reward was beneficial for performance, showing striking increase in accuracy, especially when a large reward was offered for a difficult task. Counterintuitively (yet predicted by the model), prioritizing reward resulted in a blunted reward effect on decisions. Conversely, prioritizing effort increased reward impact on decision to engage. These results highlight the importance of controlling prioritization of motivational cues in neuroimaging studies.

How Does the Mind Render Streaming Experience as Events?

“…Accomplishing such optimization in practice would seem to require the operation of executive processes such as attentional enhancement/suppression and cognitive flexibility to reshape processing in relation to new or unexpected information. These ideas seem to be consistent with others' recent efforts to account for the neural basis of adaptive relations between executive processes and other cognitive processes (e.g., Alexander, Vassena, Deraeve, & Langford, 2017; Vassena, Deraeve, & Alexander, 2019). Considerable evidence points to executive processes undergoing extended development (e.g., Diamond, 2013; Moses & Tahiroglu, 2010; Zelazo, 2015) concomitant with age‐related changes in neural circuitry involving development of the prefrontal lobes (e.g., Tsujimoto, 2008).…”

Face the (trigger) failure: Trigger failures strongly drive the effect of reward on response inhibition

“…Nevertheless, it has been argued by many that trigger failures are mainly afferent in nature (i.e., processes preceding the actual implementation of response inhibition, also referred to as the encoding phase), arising from lapses in attention (Logan & Cowan, 1984;Matzke, Hughes, et al, 2017) or by ignoring the stop signal (Matzke, Verbruggen, & Logan, 2018). Both of these accounts of trigger failures dovetail with beliefs that attentional processes (Schevernels et al, 2015) and goal prioritization (Schmidt & DeShon, 2007;Vassena, Deraeve, & Alexander, 2019) are modulated by reward. Moreover, revisiting the experimental logic of the lab-based studies investigated here, the fact that reward could decrease trigger failures while all global-preparation elements were equated (as reward-related and reward-unrelated stop trials were randomly interleaved in the same block, preventing condition-specific proactive slowing; Verbruggen et al, 2013) lends further credence to the idea that particularly attention to the stop signal drove trigger failures in these initial reward studies.…”

Affect and cognitive control: Insights from research on effort mobilization

“…This finding complies with the principles of motivational intensity theory. Accordingly, rewardrelated positive affect could augment potential motivation and justify the necessary effort for difficult trials (see also Vassena, Deraeve, & Alexander, 2019). However, this positive effect of benefit on effort and performance seems to especially apply to conditions of implicitly processed reward cues (see Bijleveld, Custers, & Aarts, 2012;Zedelius et al, 2014).…”