NCT05466136

Mindfulness, Mental Fatigue, Inhibitory Control and Endurance Performance in Athletes

Effects of Mental Fatigue on Inhibitory Control and Endurance Performance in Athletes With Different Levels of Dispositional Mindfulness: An Event-Related Potential Study

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 90 (actual)
• Sponsor: National Taiwan Normal University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 25 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study investigated whether trait mindfulness in athletes is associated with impairments in neurocognitive function and endurance performance resulting from mental fatigue.

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). 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).

Conditions

• Mental Fatigue

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Mental fatigue condition	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.
BEHAVIORAL	Control condition	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.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-04-20
• Primary completion: 2022-10-31
• Completion: 2022-10-31
• First posted: 2022-07-20
• Last updated: 2026-03-16
• Results posted: 2026-03-16

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Taiwan