The effect of Vigil length on stress and cognitive fatigue

Abstract

Finding effective ways to mitigate the effects of cognitive fatigue is important especially for high risk occupations. Previous work may have been affected by ceiling effects as it did not attempt to induce stress and fatigue prior to treatment. Therefore, establishing a method to induce stress and cognitive fatigue quickly and effectively in laboratory settings would be useful. Vigilance tasks are a validated method to induce perceived stress and task performance errors, but can be lengthy. We compared an abbreviated vigilance task at two vigil lengths (15-minute & 30-minute) against a 15-minute quiet break as a control, while measuring perceived stress, mood, anxiety, and objective performance on a cognitive task before and after each condition. Our results showed the vigilance tasks can induce stress and cognitive fatigue and show promise as a prestudy measure to reduce ceiling effects in stress and fatigue restoration studies.