Nicoleta Prutean

Cognitive control is necessary for the performance of almost any task, both in the lab and in daily life, but exercising control is effortful and therefore typically avoided unless adequate incentive is available (Westbrook and Braver 2015).

Abstract Current theories propose that mental effort is invested only when the anticipated benefits, such as rewards, outweigh the associated costs, like task difficulty. Yet, it remains unclear whether this motivational and mitigating aspect of reward processing is reflected in the evaluation of reward/difficulty cues as such, and to what extent it depends on task experience.