I reformulate and systematically defend dual-process theory, a highly influential framework in cognitive science that has come in for vigorous criticism in recent years. I build on several strands of recent computational work, including sequential sampling models of speeded decisions, computational models of conflict tasks (e.g., the Stroop task), and computational models of cognitive control. Traditional dual-process models operate at a folk psychological level of explanation (e.g., choosing a dessert based on cool reason versus hot impulses). The reformulated version I put forward operates at the “micro-scale”—at the level of rapid (typically intra-psychic) responses, such as directing attention at a target or retrieving an item from memory. The shift to the micro-scale, I argue, addresses (or dissolves) many of the extant criticisms of dual-process views. It also sheds light on additional phenomena—such as the breakdown of control in mental disorders—that are hard to explain with prevailing paradigms.

Cognitive effort is subjectively costly. It causes people to discount valuable goals and avoid thoughtful planning, careful deliberation, and self control. Effort avoidance can thus be problematic, especially in disorders like depression and schizophrenia where excessive cost sensitivity undermines cognitive motivation. To address cost sensitivity, we first need to understand what the brain treats as costly. Traditional indices, like lateral frontal fMRI signals, and parietal alpha desynchronization in EEG data, track cognitive load to a point, but often plateau or decline, even when subjective effort continues to rise. This project will examine a promising candidate metric of cognitive effort: criticality suppression. Criticality characterizes cortical dynamics at rest, and prior studies have shown that brains become increasingly sub-critical under the very conditions known to increase subjective effort: increasing working memory load, fatigue, sleep deprivation, novelty, and cognitive aging. In this talk, I will discuss the possibility that the brain treats criticality suppression as costly because of a close relationship with opportunity costs. I will also discuss past and future studies testing a link between criticality and subjective effort.

Running, lifting a table, learning a new skill, solving a Sudoku, listening to talk, or looking for Waldo in a crowded illustration can all be experienced as effortful. Effort itself can correspond to different objective costs and processing constraints, but the sense of effort is different : it is a subjective feeling which occurs as we strive to solve physical, intellectual and perceptual problems. Several important models of the sense of effort build on a "cost-benefit" idea, according to which our sense of effort integrates a calculation on how much we have to invest (in time, glucose, limited resources, etc.) for what sort of reward. Reward here can be defined objectively (the table is lifted, the food is found and eaten) but also subjectively (as the experience of one's preferences being satisfied). Here I am showing that the cost-benefit analysis of effort should also look at meta-cognitive benefits, as we trade effort for confidence. I show why this new model explains better, or at least changes our explanations, of several phenomena, including metacognitive biases and social loafing.

This talk gives an overview over the developments in understanding the principles guiding effort mobilization according to the psychological motivational intensity theory (Brehm, 1975; Brehm & Self, 1989) and its integration with the physiological active coping approach (Obrist, 1981) by Wright (1996). According to this integration, sympathetic beta-adrenergic impact on the heart increases with experienced task difficulty as long as success is possible and justified. Moreover, further theoretical and empirical developments in better understanding effort-related cardiovascular responses based on motivational intensity’s principles are discussed. These perspectives and applications cover a large range of psychological variables and their effect on effort mobilization and responses of the cardiovascular system, including explanations of the effect of subjective ability beliefs, fatigue, gender, affective states, depression, self-consciousness, ego-involvement, social evaluation, and especially both experienced and implicit affect—frequently with counterintuitive, but theoretically predicted, findings.

Skill is often marked by a type of experience that has been termed “flow”, characterized as a feeling of “effortless absorption” in one’s present activity. However, flow is typically experienced when skilled agent are engaged in demanding tasks that present just-manageable levels of challenge rather than in tasks presenting little difficulty. Recent findings indicate that supervisory attentional and cognitive control systems of the brain are highly active during flow, suggesting that the absorption that accompanies the flow state is based on efficient but effortful forms of attention and control. Prima facie, then, flow states present paradoxical features: they arise only when one is engaged in actions that are objectively effortful and yet are not experienced as effortful. I shall argue that the paradox is more apparent than real and that what flow states illustrate is rather the dissociability between certain components of the experience of effort. In flow states, subjects exert and experience effort but their experience lacks the negative valence often accompanying feelings of effort. I shall then discuss the implications of these cases for cost-benefit models of the sense of effort.

There has been significant progress in understanding the feeling of mental effort and the feeling of bodily effort, but this progress has not translated into a general theory of the feeling of effort, and the two research programs remain largely disconnected. To advance toward such general theory, I defend the single-feeling view: the view that there is only one feeling of effort for both mental and bodily actions. This feeling represents the expected costs, both mental and physical, of performing a given action. Expected-cost theories have been proposed for the feeling of mental effort, so here I focus on arguing that the feeling of bodily effort should also be explained in those terms. This feeling does not simply represent bodily exertions, but rather their expected costs as calculated via subpersonal processes. I finish by discussing the single-feeling view’s implications for action guidance, the sense of agency, and the definition of efforts.

I offer an articulation of the mainstream view of mental effort and its place in cognitive control resource allocation. I then highlight several open questions about the nature of mental effort, and argue that clarity on these questions is important for basic theoretical progress on cognitive control as well as to avoid failures of communication across research streams within cognitive control science. Further, I offer an overarching perspective on mental effort, and the place of mental effort in a broader economy impacting resource allocation. I argue that the most fruitful view of mental effort is that it is one contributor to resource allocation among others, and that a promising hypothesis about the relationship between consciousness and cognitive control is that resource allocation decisions are influenced by a wide range of conscious experiences – experiences related to, at least, effort, fatigue, boredom, anxiety, error, difficulty, confidence, curiosity, fluency, and fun. Taking this range of experiences seriously as sources of evidence regarding the functions of cognitive control opens avenues for a more positive program in cognitive control research.

Estimating the effort needed to engage in an action and to persist in one's doing is functionally required both in physical actions (whose goal is to change the world) and in cognitive actions (whose goal is to acquire information or knowledge). Estimating one’s epistemic confidence in the ability to perform a cognitive task (such as remembering or problem solving), in contrast, is a type of evaluation that is specific to cognitive actions. This assymmetry raises the question of the specific interaction, within cognitive tasks, between experienced effortfulness and the sense of confidence in one’s own ability to obtain a correct outcome. Do they express different kinds of predictions ? Are they both modulated by anticipated rewards or risks ? How are they integrated in selecting an action or in persisting in it ? To address these questions, we will discuss the empirical evidence regarding the subjective experiences involved, and their respective contributions to action guidance.

Terms with a dual character like 'scientist' and 'painting' are not only applied descriptively, but also normatively, as in "true scientist". In this talk, I explore the role of striving and commitment for normatively representing social roles and artifacts.