Measuring Respondents’ Cognitive Load Related to Making Factual and Normative Judgments

The use of various methods for measuring cognitive load and mental effort in recent years has become increasingly popular in various fields of social and affective neuroscience, in applied research on the comparative effectiveness of teaching methods and training platforms, in the study of the distr...

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Main Authors: Инна Феликсовна Девятко, Александр Александрович Бызов
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) 2022-12-01
Series:Monitoring Obŝestvennogo Mneniâ: Ekonomičeskie i Socialʹnye Peremeny
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.monitoringjournal.ru/index.php/monitoring/article/view/2290
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author Инна Феликсовна Девятко
Александр Александрович Бызов
author_facet Инна Феликсовна Девятко
Александр Александрович Бызов
author_sort Инна Феликсовна Девятко
collection DOAJ
description The use of various methods for measuring cognitive load and mental effort in recent years has become increasingly popular in various fields of social and affective neuroscience, in applied research on the comparative effectiveness of teaching methods and training platforms, in the study of the distribution of attention in solving various problems and using informational tips in decision making, etc. In this broader context, the specific request for a multimodal assessment of the cognitive load of interviewers and respondents and of its impact on the quality of the survey data, including the use of paradata and webcams for this purpose, has been also growing recently. We conducted a within-subject methodological experiment (N = 50) aiming at comparative measurement of task-evoked cognitive load of respondents related to two tasks of making factual and normative judgments. The first task implied making causal and blame judgments for two institutional domains (medical, work dress-code) using the similar factorial vignettes, while the second task presupposed making lay factual and normative-deontic judgments concerning migrant rights to free health care. We used in parallel two measures of task-evoked cognitive load — pupillometry (Pupil Lab glasses), and the Paas scale of mental effort. The results provide limited evidence in support of the difference that exists between ordinary judgments of cause, blame, and severity of harm in terms of their propensity to evoke psychosensory pupillary response and subjectively perceived mental effort, both reflecting the variability in the cognitive load imposed on survey respondent when performing a pertinent survey task. We also briefly discuss the evidence obtained in support of the task-specific difference in sensitivity and validity of neurophysiological and self-report-based measures of survey-related cognitive load. Acknowledgement. The research was supported by RSF (project number 22-28-00968, project title: “Eye-tracking data and pupillometry in multimodal measurement of the respondents' cognitive load”). Disclosure statement. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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spelling doaj.art-e7d20abe08e44b788e43ef212ef9cc2b2023-01-13T15:15:58ZengRussian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM)Monitoring Obŝestvennogo Mneniâ: Ekonomičeskie i Socialʹnye Peremeny2219-54672022-12-01610.14515/monitoring.2022.6.22901680Measuring Respondents’ Cognitive Load Related to Making Factual and Normative JudgmentsИнна Феликсовна Девятко0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1955-7592Александр Александрович Бызовhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6253-8581HSE UniversityThe use of various methods for measuring cognitive load and mental effort in recent years has become increasingly popular in various fields of social and affective neuroscience, in applied research on the comparative effectiveness of teaching methods and training platforms, in the study of the distribution of attention in solving various problems and using informational tips in decision making, etc. In this broader context, the specific request for a multimodal assessment of the cognitive load of interviewers and respondents and of its impact on the quality of the survey data, including the use of paradata and webcams for this purpose, has been also growing recently. We conducted a within-subject methodological experiment (N = 50) aiming at comparative measurement of task-evoked cognitive load of respondents related to two tasks of making factual and normative judgments. The first task implied making causal and blame judgments for two institutional domains (medical, work dress-code) using the similar factorial vignettes, while the second task presupposed making lay factual and normative-deontic judgments concerning migrant rights to free health care. We used in parallel two measures of task-evoked cognitive load — pupillometry (Pupil Lab glasses), and the Paas scale of mental effort. The results provide limited evidence in support of the difference that exists between ordinary judgments of cause, blame, and severity of harm in terms of their propensity to evoke psychosensory pupillary response and subjectively perceived mental effort, both reflecting the variability in the cognitive load imposed on survey respondent when performing a pertinent survey task. We also briefly discuss the evidence obtained in support of the task-specific difference in sensitivity and validity of neurophysiological and self-report-based measures of survey-related cognitive load. Acknowledgement. The research was supported by RSF (project number 22-28-00968, project title: “Eye-tracking data and pupillometry in multimodal measurement of the respondents' cognitive load”). Disclosure statement. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.https://www.monitoringjournal.ru/index.php/monitoring/article/view/2290mental effortcognitive loadfactual judgementsnormative judgementsvignette experiment
spellingShingle Инна Феликсовна Девятко
Александр Александрович Бызов
Measuring Respondents’ Cognitive Load Related to Making Factual and Normative Judgments
Monitoring Obŝestvennogo Mneniâ: Ekonomičeskie i Socialʹnye Peremeny
mental effort
cognitive load
factual judgements
normative judgements
vignette experiment
title Measuring Respondents’ Cognitive Load Related to Making Factual and Normative Judgments
title_full Measuring Respondents’ Cognitive Load Related to Making Factual and Normative Judgments
title_fullStr Measuring Respondents’ Cognitive Load Related to Making Factual and Normative Judgments
title_full_unstemmed Measuring Respondents’ Cognitive Load Related to Making Factual and Normative Judgments
title_short Measuring Respondents’ Cognitive Load Related to Making Factual and Normative Judgments
title_sort measuring respondents cognitive load related to making factual and normative judgments
topic mental effort
cognitive load
factual judgements
normative judgements
vignette experiment
url https://www.monitoringjournal.ru/index.php/monitoring/article/view/2290
work_keys_str_mv AT innafeliksovnadevâtko measuringrespondentscognitiveloadrelatedtomakingfactualandnormativejudgments
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