Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Impact of effort exertion on cognitive flexibility and stabilityAnna Mini Jos, Myles LoParco, A. Ross Otto*Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montral, CanadaEfficient task execution requires attention to task requirements while inhibiting distractors (cognitive stability) and adapt-ing to changes (flexibility). Previous studies have shown that individuals differ in their application of stable versus flexibleprocessing modes. Our study examined the impact of prior effort exertion on flexibility/stability trade-off.Participants performed a stability-flexibility paradigm, with pupil recording, before and after effort and no-effort manipula-tions were induced using different tasks. We analyzed the resulting change in preferences for stability/flexibility (voluntaryswitch rate).We found that the no-effort condition evoked a higher voluntary switch rate than baseline or after effort exertion. Partici-pants in the effort condition also showed higher response times and lower accuracy across trials. Pupil data shows that aftereffort exertion participants exert less effort in spontaneous switches and repeats. Additionally, the relationship betweenswitch cost (on forced-switch trials) and spontaneous switching rate increased after effort exertion. These results suggestthat stability/flexibility preferences can vary with prior effort exertion.