Mindfulness, Mental Fatigue, Inhibitory Control and Endurance Performance in Athletes
Condition: Mental Fatigue
MeSH terms: Fatigue; Mental Fatigue
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      This study investigated the mediating effect of dispositional mindfulness on the impact of
      mental fatigue on neurocognitive functions and endurance performance in athletes.
    

Detailed description: 
      Recent research suggests that mental fatigue by prolonged cognitive tasks would impair
      neurocognitive functions (e.g., executive functions, brain activity) and sports performance,
      especially inhibitory control and endurance performance. On the other hand, individuals with
      higher dispositional mindfulness have been linked to greater athletic performance and
      cognitive functions. Still, there is little known whether higher dispositional mindfulness
      counteracts the detrimental effects of mental fatigue on endurance performance and inhibitory
      control in athletes. Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate whether dispositional
      mindfulness mediates the effects of mental fatigue on neurocognitive functions and endurance
      performance in athletes.

      The qualified participants will visit the lab on two counterbalanced order occasions to
      complete either a modified incongruent Stroop task (mental fatigue condition, MF) or a
      modified congruent Stroop task (control condition, CON) for 30 minutes. Before and after each
      cognitive task, participants will be measured for their subjective mental fatigue by a visual
      analog scale (VAS). After each cognitive task, inhibitory control and endurance performance
      will be evaluated by a Flanker task and a graded exercise test (GXT), respectively.
      Furthermore, the general and athletic dispositional mindfulness will be measured using the
      Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and Athlete Mindfulness Questionnaire (AMQ),
      respectively.

      Specifically, the targeted primary outcomes are neurocognitive functions (i.e., reaction
      time, accuracy and ERPs in Flanker task) and endurance performance (i.e., VO2max & time to
      exhaustion in GXT); The secondary outcomes are subjective (i.e., VAS score)/objective (i.e.,
      reaction time, accuracy in Stroop task) mental fatigue, motivation in tasks, mood (i.e.,
      BRUMS-C).
    

Intervention name(s): Mental fatigue condition; Control condition
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): In mental fatigue condition, the mental fatigue manipulation will use a modified Stroop task with complete incongruent trials, which is wildly used to induce a mentally fatigued state in previous studies. The Stroop task included four colored words presented in traditional Chinese (i.e., red, green, blue, and yellow), the color of the word will paint inconsistent with the semantic meaning of the word (e.g., red word printed in green). The task consisted of five 6-minute blocks and 1080 incongruent trials for each block. The total duration will be 30-min.; Similar to mental fatigue conditions, the modified Stroop task with complete congruent trials will be used, The Stroop task also included four colored words presented in traditional Chinese (i.e., red, green, blue, and yellow), but the color of the word will paint consistent with the semantic meaning of the word (e.g., red word printed in red) in order to set up the match condition of relative less cognitive demanding for participants. Same with the mental fatigue condition, the task consisted of five 6-minute blocks and 1080 congruent trials for each block. The total duration will be 30-min.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Crossover Assignment
Intervention model description: The participants will visit the lab on two counterbalanced order occasions to complete either an incongruent version Stroop task (mental fatigue condition, MF) or a congruent version Stroop task (control condition, CON) for 30 minutes to induce the mental fatigue state.
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Screening
Keywords: Mindfulness; Athletes; Mental fatigue; Inhibitory control; Endurance performance