A labor/leisure tradeoff in cognitive control.
Wouter Kool,Matthew Botvinick +1 more
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Results from 3 economic-choice experiments indicate that the motivation underlying cognitive labor/leisure decision making is to strike an optimal balance between income and leisure, as given by a joint utility function, and establish a new connection between microeconomics and research on executive function.Abstract:
Daily life frequently offers a choice between activities that are profitable but mentally demanding (cognitive labor) and activities that are undemanding but also unproductive (cognitive leisure). Although such decisions are often implicit, they help determine academic performance, career trajectories, and even health outcomes. Previous research has shed light both on the executive control functions that ultimately define cognitive labor and on a "default mode" of brain function that accompanies cognitive leisure. However, little is known about how labor/leisure decisions are actually made. Here, we identify a central principle guiding such decisions. Results from 3 economic-choice experiments indicate that the motivation underlying cognitive labor/leisure decision making is to strike an optimal balance between income and leisure, as given by a joint utility function. The results reported establish a new connection between microeconomics and research on executive function. They also suggest a new interpretation of so-called ego-depletion effects and a potential new approach to such phenomena as mind wandering and self-control failure.read more
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The Expected Value of Control: An Integrative Theory of Anterior Cingulate Cortex Function
TL;DR: This work presents a normative model of EVC that integrates three critical factors: the expected payoff from a controlled process, the amount of control that must be invested to achieve that payoff, and the cost in terms of cognitive effort.
Journal ArticleDOI
Motivation and Cognitive Control: From Behavior to Neural Mechanism
Matthew Botvinick,Todd S. Braver +1 more
TL;DR: It is argued that neuroscientific evidence plays a critical role in understanding the mechanisms by which motivation and cognitive control interact, and is advocated for a view of control function that treats it as a domain of reward-based decision making.
Journal ArticleDOI
Why self-control seems (but may not be) limited.
TL;DR: A competing model that develops a non-resource-based account of self-control is advanced, suggesting that apparent regulatory failures reflect the motivated switching of task priorities as people strive to strike an optimal balance between engaging cognitive labor to pursue 'have- to' goals versus preferring cognitive leisure in the pursuit of 'want-to' goals.
Journal ArticleDOI
Computational rationality: A converging paradigm for intelligence in brains, minds, and machines
TL;DR: This work charts advances over the past several decades that address challenges of perception and action under uncertainty through the lens of computation to identify decisions with highest expected utility, while taking into consideration the costs of computation in complex real-world problems in which most relevant calculations can only be approximated.
References
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Book ChapterDOI
Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk
Daniel Kahneman,Amos Tversky +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a critique of expected utility theory as a descriptive model of decision making under risk, and develop an alternative model, called prospect theory, in which value is assigned to gains and losses rather than to final assets and in which probabilities are replaced by decision weights.
Journal ArticleDOI
Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being.
Richard M. Ryan,Edward L. Deci +1 more
TL;DR: Research guided by self-determination theory has focused on the social-contextual conditions that facilitate versus forestall the natural processes of self-motivation and healthy psychological development, leading to the postulate of three innate psychological needs--competence, autonomy, and relatedness.
Journal ArticleDOI
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions.
Richard M. Ryan,Edward L. Deci +1 more
TL;DR: This review revisits the classic definitions of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in light of contemporary research and theory and discusses the relations of both classes of motives to basic human needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness.
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An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function
Earl K. Miller,Jonathan D. Cohen +1 more
TL;DR: It is proposed that cognitive control stems from the active maintenance of patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex that represent goals and the means to achieve them, which provide bias signals to other brain structures whose net effect is to guide the flow of activity along neural pathways that establish the proper mappings between inputs, internal states, and outputs needed to perform a given task.
Journal ArticleDOI
A default mode of brain function.
Marcus E. Raichle,Ann Mary MacLeod,Abraham Z. Snyder,William J. Powers,Debra A. Gusnard,Gordon L. Shulman +5 more
TL;DR: A baseline state of the normal adult human brain in terms of the brain oxygen extraction fraction or OEF is identified, suggesting the existence of an organized, baseline default mode of brain function that is suspended during specific goal-directed behaviors.