Exploring the link between the subjective feeling of effort and the associated modulation of arousal during a category learning task

Cognitively demanding tasks are costly and we usually tend to avoid them. In this study, we explored mental effort and the origin of this subjective cost. The main obstacle in studying mental effort is that it remains surprisingly difficult to measure. Here, we investigated the link between subjective feeling of mental effort by using NASA TLX questionnaire and the corresponding modulation of arousal, as indexed by pupil size. We used a new category learning paradigm and we found that higher overlap between categories is associated with an increase in both feeling of effort and pupil size, and that the two correlated between each other. This is an interesting finding since it shows the link between subjective effort and arousal in a context of a simple task. This simple and efficient paradigm can be used for the future studies of mental effort.Master [120] en sciences de la motricité, orientation éducation physique, Université catholique de Louvain, 201