Is Attention Really Effort? Revisiting Daniel Kahneman's Influential 1973 Book Attention and Effort.
Brian Bruya, Yi-Yuan Tang
Frontiers in Psychology 2018 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01133 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Lc-ne system Attention Effortless Parasympathetic dominance Pupil dilation |
| Key points | Argues that Kahneman's equation of attention with effort is not warranted by the evidence, and proposes instead that attention involves readying metabolic resources through adaptive gain modulation: under sympathetic dominance it can be experienced as effortful, while under parasympathetic dominance it can be experienced as effortless. |
Abstract
Daniel Kahneman was not the first to suggest that attention and effort are closely associated, but his 1973 book Attention and Effort, which claimed that attention can be identified with effort, cemented the association as a research paradigm in the cognitive sciences. Since then, the paradigm has rarely been questioned and appears to have set the research agenda so that it is self-reinforcing. In this article, we retrace Kahneman's argument to understand its strengths and weaknesses. The central notion of effort is not clearly defined in the book, so we proceed by constructing the most secure inferences we can from Kahneman's argument regarding effort: it is cognitive, objective, metabolic expenditure, and it is attention. Continuing, we find from Kahneman's argument that effort-attention must be a special case of sympathetic dominance of the autonomic nervous system that is also an increase in metabolic activity in the brain that has crossed a threshold of magnitude. We then weigh this conception of effort against evidence in Kahneman's book and against more recent evidence, finding that it does not warrant the conclusion that effort can be equated with attention. In support of an alternative perspective, we briefly review diverse studies of behavior, physiology, and neuroscience on attention and effort, including meditation and studies of the LC-NE system, where we find evidence for the following: (1) Attention seems to be associated not with the utilization of metabolic resources per se but with the readying of metabolic resources in the form of adaptive gain modulation. This occurs under sympathetic dominance and can be experienced as effortful. (2) Attention can also occur under parasympathetic dominance, in which case it is likely to be experienced as effortless.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 7
- Arousal vs. relaxation: a comparison of the neurophysiological and cognitive correlates of Vajrayana and Theravada meditative practices. PLoS One 2014
- Neural correlates of establishing, maintaining, and switching brain states. Trends in Cognitive Sciences June 2012
- Increased theta and alpha EEG activity during nondirective meditation. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine November 2009
- Central and autonomic nervous system interaction is altered by short-term meditation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences June 2, 2009
- Inward-attention meditation increases parasympathetic activity: a study based on heart rate variability. Biomedical Research October 1, 2008
and 2 more in the library