Abstract
Although many studies have investigated the relationship between the amount of effort invested in a certain task and one’s attitude towards the subsequent reward, whether exerted effort would impact one’s expectation and evaluation of performance feedback itself still remains to be examined. In the present study, two types of calculation tasks that varied in the required effort were adopted, and we resorted to electroencephalography to probe the temporal dynamics of how exerted effort would affect one’s anticipation and evaluation of performance feedback. In the high-effort condition, a more salient stimulus-preceding negativity was detected during the anticipation stage, which was accompanied with a more salient FRN/P300 complex (a more positive P300 and a less negative feedback-related negativity) in response to positive outcomes in the evaluation stage. These results suggested that when more effort was invested, an enhanced anticipatory attention would be paid toward one’s task performance feedback and that positive outcomes would be subjectively valued to a greater extent.
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Acknowledgements
Lei Wang was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 71471163]. Liang Meng was funded by “Chen Guang” project supported by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and Shanghai Education Development Foundation [Grant No. 16CG36], and a project from the Planning Fund of Shanghai International Studies University [Grant No. 20161140012].
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Wang, L., Zheng, J. & Meng, L. Effort provides its own reward: endeavors reinforce subjective expectation and evaluation of task performance. Exp Brain Res 235, 1107–1118 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-4873-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-4873-z