Effort in daily life: relationships between experimental tasks and daily experience

Abstract

Recently, experimental tasks have been developed which index individual differences in willingness to expend effort for reward. However, little is known regarding whether such measures are associated with daily experience of effort. To test this, 31 participants completed an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol, answering surveys regarding the mental and physical demand of their daily activities, and also completed two effort-based decision-making tasks: the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT) and the Cognitive Effort Discounting (COGED) Task. Individuals who reported engaging in more mentally and physically demanding activities via EMA were also more willing to expend effort in the COGED task. However, EMA variables were not significantly associated with EEfRT decision-making. The results demonstrate the ecological, discriminant, and incremental validity of the COGED task, and provide preliminary evidence that individual differences in daily experience of effort may arise, in part, from differences in trait-level tendencies to weigh the costs versus benefits of actions.

Figure 1:

Frequency of Self-Reported Activities during the EMA Protocol

Figure 2:. Effort-Based Decision-Making Task Performance:

Top (EEfRT): individuals selected the hard task with greater frequency as reward value and probability of reward receipt increased, but we did not find a significant interaction reward by probability interaction. Bottom (COGED): subjective values decreased with higher N-back levels (i.e., they were discounted more steeply with increasing N-back load) However, subjective value did not vary by hard task offer amount (i.e., participants discounted $2 and $4 offer values similarly).

Figure 3:

Associations between Effort-Based Decision-Making and Self-Reported Daily Effort Comment: Shaded region indicates 95% confidence interval