Where does effort collide?

In cognitive psychology, effort is the exertion of limited mental resources demanded by a task, experienced as costly and therefore something people weigh against expected reward and tend to avoid when they can. Westbrook and Braver's Cognitive effort: A neuroeconomic approach frames mental effort as a cost entered into a cost–benefit computation, so that whether a person engages depends on the value of the outcome relative to the effort required. The referent is a quantity of resource expenditure and its subjective cost, measured through choices to invest or withhold engagement, and it is a different construct from the movement quality that Laban named effort.[1]

Unit

The amount and subjective cost of mental resources invested in a task

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Inferred from willingness to engage demanding tasks, effort-discounting choices, performance costs, and physiological markers of exertion

In laban movement analysis, Effort is the technical name for the dynamic quality of a movement (the inner attitude toward exertion that colors how, not what, a person moves) described along the factors of weight, time, space, and flow (for example strong versus light, sudden versus sustained, direct versus flexible, bound versus free). Wahl's Laban/Bartenieff movement studies presents these Effort factors as a vocabulary for reading the expressive texture of movement. The referent is the qualitative dynamics of movement, observed and classified rather than scored for cost, and it is unrelated to the resource-exertion meaning of effort beyond the shared root word.[2]

Unit

The dynamic quality of a movement along weight, time, space, and flow

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Described by trained observers classifying a movement's weight, time, space, and flow qualities rather than by any single number