What is the lab currently working on?
Investigating the function & relevance of basic human sensations for performance regulation
A key interest of the DHPRL is in the function and relevance of fundamental human sensations in relation to performance regulation. Currently, we are particularly interested in effort and boredom, both in the physical and cognitive domains. For example, we investigate how perceived task difficulty (e.g., due to high physical or cognitive demands) and boredom dynamically change during an activity. In this context, we are interested in understanding to what extent perceived task difficulty and boredom contribute individually to the overall sense of effort (and thus promote task discontinuation or performance decrements) and how these changes specifically correlate with changes in associated neurophysiological systems.
Understanding boredom in the context of health and performance
In recent years, interest in the action-regulating function of boredom has increased significantly. There is now strong evidence that boredom signals that an ongoing activity is of low value and initiates a search for alternative actions. As boredom is understood to be a driver of exploratory behavior, boredom plays a significant role in navigating the exploration/exploitation trade-off: High levels of boredom lead us to seek immediate rewards, and engaging in a boring task is accompanied by increased effort due to the need to control the impulse to do ‘something else.’ Regarding sports and health behavior, the potential relevance of boredom is evident: For many people, exercise is not only physically demanding but also boring. The rewards for enduring this boredom often come with delay (e.g., long-term fitness gains not visible after a single workout session), while immediate and more tempting alternatives ‘lurk at every corner’ (e.g., a delicious cake in the shop window passed during a jog). Against this background, we are interested in the effect that momentary boredom and chronic boredom have on various performance and health parameters.
To read more about boredom studies click here
Specificity vs. generalization of effort preferences and costs
People can exert effort in the cognitive and physical domains. For example, we can employ physical effort to run a marathon or cognitive effort to master an introductory statistics class. But are these essentially the same efforts that are merely employed via different means and in different contexts, or do people perceive them differently? Here, we examine this question in more detail. We are interested in the degree to which people are specific towards the efforts they employ, which configurations of effort they prefer, and whether the costs/benefits of effort in the physical and cognitive domains are integrated jointly or separately. To unpack this, we conduct laboratory research using formalized decision paradigms and questionnaire research with specific populations (for example: children vs. adults; athletes vs. non-athletes).
Understanding the alignment of subjective effort and objective performance
Ratings of perception of effort are widely used in the fields of exercise science, clinical research, and applied contexts in order to manage and assess exertion. Surprisingly, little is known about the underlying internal models that translate subjective perceptions of effort across different levels of exertion into actual performance. Specifically, it is unclear whether subjectively perceived differences in effort are proportional to objective differences in performance, which would imply a linear translation, or if the relationship is more complex and possibly nonlinear. We investigate this using reward-based choice theories from cognitive control research. Within DHPRL, our research aims to fundamentally understand this translation and gain valuable insights for its application. In addition, want to investigate alignment in terms of robustness over time and in relation to environmental parameters such as the presence of others or feedback.