Mental effort and discomfort: Testing the peak-end effect during a cognitively demanding task

Chia Fen Hsu*, Lee Propp, Larissa Panetta, Shane Martin, Stella Dentakos, Maggie E. Toplak, John D. Eastwood

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Article peer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

We applied the peak-end paradigm that was first introduced in the pain literature to examine the experience of effort and discomfort during a cognitively demanding working memory task. A total of 401 participants were asked to rate their effort and discomfort during and after the administration of a working memory task, which systematically varied task difficulty within participants and task duration between participants. Over the course of the task, participants reported a decrease in reported effort and an increase in reported discomfort. Peak and end real-time ratings were significant predictors of retrospective ratings for effort and discomfort; average and initial ratings predicted a small amount of additional variance. The regression analyses with effort and discomfort were largely consistent, with some exceptions. End discomfort significantly predicted willingness to do the task again, but not end effort. These findings highlight the ways in which the experience of effort and discomfort are integrally related, yet importantly separate, during a cognitively demanding task.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0191479
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume13
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 02 2018
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Hsu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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