A transdiagnostic computational account linking mental fatigue and cognitive effort
Abstract
Motivational impairments are common to many psychiatric conditions, yet associations between psychiatric symptoms and willingness to exert cognitive effort have been inconsistent. Previous studies have mostly analyzed cognitive effort at the moment when people choose to engage in an effortful task, overlooking fatigue before the choice and how the task is executed after the choice. Here we examined this process during a 75-min online experiment involving 529 adults with psychiatric profiles spanning a broad range of symptoms. Participants repeatedly chose between resting and performing a demanding working-memory task, carried out the selected activity, and reported their fatigue. We derived continuous transdiagnostic symptom dimensions and modeled fatigue, effort selection, and task performance across time. Across participants, fatigue accumulated over time, and higher pre-choice fatigue predicted effort avoidance despite high overall task accuracy. Higher anxious-depression scores were associated with greater initial fatigue, faster fatigue accumulation, and a progressively steeper decline in high-effort choices. By contrast, higher compulsivity/intrusive thought scores were associated with more frequent high-effort choices but lower accuracy after effort was selected. Motivational dysfunction therefore did not reduce to a general reluctance to exert effort, but emerged through distinct alterations in fatigue accumulation, effort selection, and task execution. A dynamic, process-based account that separates these stages may help reconcile inconsistent findings in effort-based mental health research.
Related
- Beyond illness severity: transdiagnostic cognitive vulnerabilities as independent predictors of psychological distress in parents of children with rare genetic disorders
- Latent transdiagnostic dimensions linking sleep and psychopathology map onto distinct connectome-wide networks
- A Computational Account of Approach-Avoidance Conflict in a Foraging-Inspired Search Paradigm
- Relative Brain Perfusion Differences in a Patient With Persistent Fatigue and Subjective Cognitive Symptoms: A Case Report
- Rehabilitative efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy-based intervention for chronic fatigue syndrome : A systematic review and meta-analysis
BibTeX
@misc{yang2026transdiagnostic,
title = {{A transdiagnostic computational account linking mental fatigue and cognitive effort}},
author = {Yang Yang and Akina Umemoto and Senne Braem and Clay Holroyd},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/98pfs_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/98pfs_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A transdiagnostic computational account linking mental fatigue and cognitive effort
AU - Yang Yang
AU - Akina Umemoto
AU - Senne Braem
AU - Clay Holroyd
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/03
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/98pfs_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/98pfs_v1/
AB - Motivational impairments are common to many psychiatric conditions, yet associations between psychiatric symptoms and willingness to exert cognitive effort have been inconsistent. Previous studies have mostly analyzed cognitive effort at the moment when people choose to engage in an effortful task, overlooking fatigue before the choice and how the task is executed after the choice. Here we examined this process during a 75-min online experiment involving 529 adults with psychiatric profiles spanning a broad range of symptoms. Participants repeatedly chose between resting and performing a demanding working-memory task, carried out the selected activity, and reported their fatigue. We derived continuous transdiagnostic symptom dimensions and modeled fatigue, effort selection, and task performance across time. Across participants, fatigue accumulated over time, and higher pre-choice fatigue predicted effort avoidance despite high overall task accuracy. Higher anxious-depression scores were associated with greater initial fatigue, faster fatigue accumulation, and a progressively steeper decline in high-effort choices. By contrast, higher compulsivity/intrusive thought scores were associated with more frequent high-effort choices but lower accuracy after effort was selected. Motivational dysfunction therefore did not reduce to a general reluctance to exert effort, but emerged through distinct alterations in fatigue accumulation, effort selection, and task execution. A dynamic, process-based account that separates these stages may help reconcile inconsistent findings in effort-based mental health research.
ER -