Abstract
This study investigated objective and subjective cognitive effort as a function of task difficulty in schizophrenia, based on the principles of motivational intensity theory. Thirty individuals with schizophrenia and 30 healthy controls worked on four levels of a working memory task ranging from easy to extremely difficult. We assessed objective effort as cardiovascular activity during task performance and subjective effort via self-report. In addition, we assessed participants’ task performance, negative symptoms, amotivation, depression, and fatigue. Cardiovascular activity during the task increased only in the healthy control group, but not in the schizophrenia group, indicating attenuated objective effort in schizophrenia. However, individuals with schizophrenia reported similar levels of subjective effort as healthy controls. Moreover, we found a negative association between fatigue and cardiovascular activity only in the schizophrenia group. Our results show a dissociation between objective and subjective effort in schizophrenia, which may explain decreased willingness to mobilize cognitive resources in individuals with schizophrenia. Moreover, our results highlight the importance of fatigue in effort in schizophrenia, a variable rarely considered in the current literature.
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Data Availability
The datasets collected during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Notes
Because depression and BMI were significantly higher in the schizophrenia group than in the healthy control group and because these two clinical variables could influence objective effort (i.e., cardiovascular activity), we also considered them as covariates in the analyses of SBP reactivity reported the main text.
Depression (BDI-II score) had no significant covariate main or interaction effects (all ps > .18).
By contrast, BMI had a significant covariate main effect, F(1, 57) = 42.42, p < .001, η2p = .43, on cardiovascular reactivity. Moreover, the analysis revealed a Difficulty x Group interaction, F(3.22, 183.61) = 4.09, p = .007, η2p = .06, in absence of Group (p = .95) or Difficulty (p = .70) main effects. Follow-up comparisons found that the SBP baseline values were significantly lower than the four task measures in the healthy control group (ps < .001). By contrast, in the schizophrenia group, no significant differences emerged between the five SBP measures (ps > .85). The addition of the BMI covariate did not change the Difficulty x Group interaction effect or the follow-up comparisons presented in this manuscript.
We also conducted a 4 (Difficulty) × 2 (Group) mixed-model ANOVA of the error rates (i.e., sums of false alarms and omission errors). That analysis only found a Difficulty main effect, F(2.56, 148.26) = 152.51, p < .001, η2p = .72, (others ps > .09). These results do not differ from those found for the sensitivity index.
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We wish to thank the participants who volunteered for this research, Aline Deat for her help in the recruitment process.
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Décombe, A., Brinkmann, K., Merenciano, M. et al. Cognitive effort in Schizophrenia: Dissimilar effects on cardiovascular activity and subjective effort. Curr Psychol 42, 20737–20747 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03145-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03145-4