A study on the construction of mental fatigue model and the change of psychological efficacy

Abstract

Objective The mental fatigue model was constructed to explore the dynamic characteristics of psychological efficacy such as emotion, cognition and simulated flight mission (SFM) performance. Methods A total of 37 healthy male subjects were recruited in this study. The mental fatigue model was constructed by using 40 h sleep deprivation. The body emotion state, alertness, risk decision-making and SPF performance were collected at 15 time points, respectively. The dynamic changes were studied by psychophysiological interaction and correlation analysis. Result Compared with the baseline, the subjects’ (1) fatigue, drowsiness and negative emotion increased significantly; (2) attention decreased, risk decision-making was impaired; (3) SFM performance decreased; (4) SFM performance decreased the earliest, followed by emotion, attention and risk decision-making; (5) there was a positive correlation between anger and the performance impairment of SFM. Conclusion The model of mental fatigue was successfully constructed, and the dynamic changes of various behavioral indicators and their correlation were analyzed in detail, which provided a reliable basis for the follow-up study.