The Influence of Worker’s Motivation on Intellectual Concentration by
ACT-R Cognitive Models
Authors: Dianita Orchida , Takeuchi Keisuke , Ueda Kimi , Ishii Hirotake , Shimoda Hiroshi , Obayashi Fumiaki 
Published: February 2023

IntroductionThe purpose of this study is to examine the worker’s
motivation effect on intellectual concentration by an experiment and a
cognitive process simulation. By utilizing the Adaptive Control of
Thought-Rational (ACT-R) concept, it helps to understand the cognitive
models of the different motivational condition. ACT-R is one of the
prevalent cognitive architectures that mainly differ the cognitive process
into production modules and declarative modules.Several studies have been
investigating the human cognitive performance in respect of others factors
such as working environments. Inspirited by previous studies, this study has
explored the human motivational factors that might influence intellectual
concentration. Additionally, exploring the differences in workers’
individual problem-solving strategy is one of the alluring factors in this
study given the differences in motivational conditions.MethodsFive
participants were recruited for the experiment the range of their ages
between 18-22 years old as a pilot study. The simple summation mathematical
task was given during the experiments and shows two numbers on the left side
and right side of the monitor screen. They were asked to answer the problem
by pressing the numerical keyboard and the answering time was automatically
recorded on the experiment program. The eye gaze movements were recorded and
analyzed during the experiments. In this study, the participants performed
the task under two different motivational conditions. The first condition
was set to create the urge to finish the task immediately which generates
high motivation to finish the task as fast as they can. The other condition
was set in a neutral condition which the participants could perform at their
own pace without a rush. From this experiment, approximately 3000 answering
time data and 900.000 frames of the eye gaze movement were gathered and
analyzed.ResultsThe different motivational conditions influenced the user’s
task performance, showing a statistical difference in the user’s answering
time in a high motivational and neutral conditions (p < 0.01). The
distribution of the answering time follows the log-normal distribution
shapes shown by both conditions.The participants performed different
strategies in the cognitive task. Following the ACT-R modules, in general,
the identified eye gaze patterns are divided into 2 patterns. The first
pattern follows the production rules: (1)find-left-number,
(2)attend-left-number, (3)encode-left-number, (4)retrieve-left-number,
(5)find-right-number, (6)attend-right-number, (7)encode-right-number,
(8)waiting-for-start-back, (9)attend-start-back, summation, and
(10)keyboard-click. On the other hand, the second pattern follows the
production rules: (1)find-left-number, (2)attend-left-number,
(3)encode-left-number, (4)retrieve-left-number, (5)find-right-number,
(6)encode-right-number, (7)summation, keyboard-click,
(8)waiting-for-start-back, and (9)attend-start-back.In the different
motivational conditions, the pattern’s appearance is altered. For
participants 1, 3, and 5 the second patterns were dominant during the high
motivational condition. Some irregular patterns arouse in the last 5 minutes
of the task. This condition might due to the degradation of the user’s
cognitive performance when the user feels tired and it might be the time
duration that affected their cognitive performance. The results of this
study might enlighten future research on cognitive performance by proposing
a new method of eye gaze pattern identification on ACT-R cognitive models.