Abstract
In this paper, we propose a set of unifying definitions that are useful in all areas of fatigue research while remaining neutral to the various theories about fatigue. We first set up two criteria and four desiderata that a definition for interdisciplinary use needs to fulfill: (i) non-circularity, (ii) finiteness, (iii) broadness, (iv) precision, (v) neutrality, and (vi) phenomenon-focus. We argue that other existing attempts to unify definitions within fatigue research do not fulfill all of these criteria and desiderata. Instead, we argue for a set of stipulative definitions, centered around performance measures and subjective estimations, is required in order to maximize clarity. In total, a set of 13 distinct definitions of fatigue and fatigue-related phenomena is presented. These definitions will help facilitate communication between different researchers, link phenomena from divergent research fields together, facilitate application and knowledge production, and increase the specificity for hypothesis testing.
Highlights
Fatigue is a phenomenon studied in various research fields, such as cognitive neuroscience, exercise physiology, psychology, and the medical sciences
Different studies denote the phenomenon of decreased cognitive performance after a period of activity as; central fatigue (Friedman et al, 2007; Kluger et al, 2013), cognitive fatigue (Bailey et al, 2007; Ackerman and Kanfer, 2009; Wylie and Flashman, 2017), mental fatigue (Inzlicht et al, 2014), fatigability (Kluger et al, 2013), cognitive fatigability (Walker et al, 2019), and ego-depletion (Baumeister et al, 2018)
In Skau et al (2019), we found that patients suffering from problems with fatigue after a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) performed on a cognitive task (Digit Symbol Coding) (Wechsler, 2010) equivalently well at two time points that were intermediated with 1.5 h of intense cognitive activity
Summary
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Performance Science, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. We propose a set of unifying definitions that are useful in all areas of fatigue research while remaining neutral to the various theories about fatigue. We first set up two criteria and four desiderata that a definition for interdisciplinary use needs to fulfill: (i) non-circularity, (ii) finiteness, (iii) broadness, (iv) precision, (v) neutrality, and (vi) phenomenon-focus. We argue that other existing attempts to unify definitions within fatigue research do not fulfill all of these criteria and desiderata. A set of 13 distinct definitions of fatigue and fatigue-related phenomena is presented. These definitions will help facilitate communication between different researchers, link phenomena from divergent research fields together, facilitate application and knowledge production, and increase the specificity for hypothesis testing
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