TY - JOUR
T1 - The temporal dynamics of opportunity costs
T2 - A normative account of cognitive fatigue and boredom
AU - Agrawal, Mayank
AU - Mattar, Marcelo G.
AU - Cohen, Jonathan D.
AU - Daw, Nathaniel D.
PY - 2022/4/1
Y1 - 2022/4/1
N2 - Cognitive fatigue and boredom are two phenomenological states that reflect overt task disengagement. In this article, we present a rational analysis of the temporal structure of controlled behavior, which provides a formal account of these phenomena. We suggest that in controlling behavior, the brain faces competing behavioral and computational imperatives, and must balance them by tracking their opportunity costs over time. We use this analysis to flesh out previous suggestions that feelings associated with subjective effort, like cognitive fatigue and boredom, are the phenomenological counterparts of these opportunity cost measures, instead of reflecting the depletion of resources as has often been assumed. Specifically, we propose that both fatigue and boredom reflect the competing value of particular options that require foregoing immediate reward but can improve future performance: Fatigue reflects the value of offline computation (internal to the organism) to improve future decisions, while boredom signals the value of exploration (external in the world). We demonstrate that these accounts provide a mechanistically explicit and parsimonious account for a wide array of findings related to cognitive control, integrating and reimagining them under a single, formally rigorous framework. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
AB - Cognitive fatigue and boredom are two phenomenological states that reflect overt task disengagement. In this article, we present a rational analysis of the temporal structure of controlled behavior, which provides a formal account of these phenomena. We suggest that in controlling behavior, the brain faces competing behavioral and computational imperatives, and must balance them by tracking their opportunity costs over time. We use this analysis to flesh out previous suggestions that feelings associated with subjective effort, like cognitive fatigue and boredom, are the phenomenological counterparts of these opportunity cost measures, instead of reflecting the depletion of resources as has often been assumed. Specifically, we propose that both fatigue and boredom reflect the competing value of particular options that require foregoing immediate reward but can improve future performance: Fatigue reflects the value of offline computation (internal to the organism) to improve future decisions, while boredom signals the value of exploration (external in the world). We demonstrate that these accounts provide a mechanistically explicit and parsimonious account for a wide array of findings related to cognitive control, integrating and reimagining them under a single, formally rigorous framework. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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U2 - 10.1037/rev0000309
DO - 10.1037/rev0000309
M3 - Article
C2 - 34383523
AN - SCOPUS:85132455483
SN - 0033-295X
VL - 129
SP - 564
EP - 585
JO - Psychological Review
JF - Psychological Review
IS - 3
ER -