Beyond Load: Understanding Cognitive Effort through Neural Efficiency and Involvement using fNIRS and Machine Learning

The estimation of cognitive effort could potentially help educators to modify material to enhance learning effectiveness and student engagement. Where cognitive load refers how much work the brain is doing while someone is learning or doing a task cognitive effort consider both load and behavioral performance. Cognitive effort can be captured by measuring oxygen flow and behavioral performance during a task. This study infers cognitive effort metrics using machine learning models based on oxygenated hemoglobin collected by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy from the prefrontal cortex during an educational gameplay. In our study, sixteen participants responded to sixteen questions in an in-house Unity-based educational game. The quiz was divided into two sessions, each session consisting of two task segments. We extracted temporal statistical and functional connectivity features from collected oxygenated hemoglobin and analyzed their correlation with quiz performance. We trained multiple machine learning models to predict quiz performance from oxygenated hemoglobin features and achieved accuracies ranging from 58\% to 67\% accuracy. These predictions were used to calculate cognitive effort via relative neural involvement and efficiency, which consider both brain activation and behavioral performance. Although quiz score predictions achieved moderate accuracy, the derived relative neural efficiency and involvement values remained robust. Since both metrics are based on the relative positions of standardized brain activation and performance scores, even small misclassifications in predicted scores preserved the overall cognitive effort trends observed during gameplay.