Traces of fatigue in an attention task

Abstract

The present study is one in a series undertaken to analyze the influence of physical fatigue on a visual perception task. Thirty minutes after being exhausted on a bicycle ergometer, 20 subjects executed a visual perception task involving tachistoscopically presented random groups of 3 to 12 dots. The subjects responded by reporting the number of dots, and their response times were measured. Under the influence of fatigue, the number of correct responses decreased, especially for the larger groups of dots. No significant differences in response times were found between fatigued and nonfatigued subjects. We conclude that fatigued subjects avoid attention that demands controlled processing and tend to adhere to uniform automatic processing. © 1992, Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.