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Poster F in Poster Session F: Thursday, August 6, 1:45 – 3:30 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Self-paced rest decisions: stable but ineffective for recovery

Nastasia Klevak¹, Joshua Buckholtz¹, Russell A. Poldrack¹; ¹Stanford University

Presenter: Nastasia Klevak

Rest is critical for fatigue recovery following periods of cognitive effort. Yet, the inter and intra-individual dynamics of rest decisions--and how they relate to performance--remain poorly characterized. In the present study, we analyze two experimental datasets in which participants alternate between epochs of two cognitively effortful tasks. After each epoch, subjects were given a costly and self-paced rest opportunity (performing a low-effort task). Using predictive modeling and latent profile analysis, we find that subjects' decisions to rest are stable and auto-correlated, potentially reflecting an individualized value policy rather than tracking in-task performance dynamics. By integrating a time-varying hidden markov model fit on within-subject performance metrics, we also find that distinct subject profiles have significantly different state occupancy patterns, and that, across all profiles, resting for longer does not improve subsequent performance. Overall, costly rest decisions appear to be a stable individual preference that is neither driven by nor beneficial to task performance.

Topic Area: Decision-Making, Cognitive Control & Event Cognition