The Cost of Thinking

Everyday speech is replete with expressions linking mental labour to economic concepts. We speak of being taxed by over-thinking, of paying attention to tasks, and investing effort. In short, we often think of thinking as costly. And yet, the clear association of effort with reward leads us, at times, to engage in activities precisely because they are effortful, and perhaps even to value effort itself. This relationship between the cost and value of effort has recently been described as a “paradox” and a “riddle”. In this talk, we will discuss novel theoretical, experimental, and computational approaches to determining the cost of thinking, in an attempt to answer the question of when and why thinking is costly, rewarding or both.