TY - JOUR PY - 2015// TI - Effect of mental fatigue on speed-accuracy trade-off JO - Neuroscience A1 - Rozand, Vianney A1 - Lebon, Florent A1 - Papaxanthis, Charalambos A1 - Lepers, Romuald SP - 219 EP - 230 VL - 297 IS - N2 - The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of mental fatigue on the duration of actual and imagined goal-directed arm movements involving speed-accuracy trade-off. Ten participants performed actual and imagined point-to-point arm movements as accurately and as fast as possible before and after a 90-min sustained cognitive task inducing mental fatigue, and before and after viewing a neutral control task (documentary movie) that did not induce mental fatigue. Target width and center-to-center target distance were varied, resulting in five different index of difficulty. Prior to mental fatigue, actual and imagined movement duration increased with the difficulty of the task, as predicted by Fitts' law. Mental fatigue task induced a 4.1 ± 0.7 % increase in actual movement duration and a 9.6 ± 1.1 % increase in imagined movement duration, independently of the index of difficulty. The trial-by-trial evolution of actual and imagined movement duration remained stable with mental fatigue. The control task did not induce any change in actual and imagined movement duration. The results suggested that movement was slowed in presence of mental fatigue, maybe due to proactive changes occurring during the preparatory state of the movement, to preserve task success.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0306-4522 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2015.03.066 ID - ref1 ER -