Policy abstraction as a predictor of cognitive effort

Consistent evidence has established that people avoid cognitively effortful tasks. However, what independent factors make a task cognitively effortful are still not well understood. Multiple hypotheses have been proposed regarding which task demands underly cognitive effort costs, such as time-on-task, error likelihood, and the general engagement of cognitive control. In this paper, we tested the novel hypothesis that tasks requiring behavior according to higher degrees of policy abstraction are experienced as more effortful. Accordingly, policy abstraction drives task avoidance over and above the effects of task performance, like time-on-task or error likelihood. In order to test this hypothesis, we combined two previously established cognitive control tasks, which include parametric manipulations of policy abstraction, with the demand selection task (DST) procedure. The design of these tasks allowed us to test whether people avoided tasks with higher order policy abstraction, while controlling for the contribution of factors like time-on-task and expected error rate. Consistent with our hypothesis, we observed across both studies and in a within-subject cross-study analysis that policy abstraction was the strongest predictor of cognitive effort choices, followed by error rates. These results establish at least one task feature independent of performance itself that is predictive of task avoidance behavior. We interpret these results within an opportunity cost framework for understanding aversive experiences of cognitive effort while performing a task.