Abstract
The modality appropriateness hypothesis argues that the auditory modality is preferred over the visual modality in tasks demanding temporal operations; hence, we predicted that responses to visual stimuli would be more sensitive to the detrimental effect of Time-on-Task. We used a bimodal temporal discrimination task. The factors were durational congruency between the modalities and the direction of modality-transmission. Participants needed to decide the duration of the cued stimulus (visual or auditory). The first five blocks of the task lasted about 1.5 h without rest [Time-on-Task (ToT) period]. The participants then had a 12-min break followed by an additional block of trials. Subjective fatigue, reaction time, error rates, and electrocardiographic data were recorded. In the visual modality, we found an enhanced congruency effect as a function of ToT. The cost of attentional shifting was higher in the auditory modality, but remained constant, suggesting that processing of auditory stimuli is robust against the effects of fatigue. Performance did not improve after the break, indicating that the effects of fatigue could not be overcome by taking a brief break. The heart rate variability (HRV) data showed that vagal inhibition increased with ToT, but this increase was not associated with the changes in performance.
Highlights
Cognitive or mental fatigue is a very common everyday phenomenon resulting, for example, from prolonged performance on cognitively demanding task
A variety of cognitive functions such as response selection, task-switching or sustained attention have been addressed in fatigue literature and have been tested under various conditions requiring more complex operations, most of the studies have used paradigms in which stimuli are only presented in a single modality
Numerous studies have shown that fatigue has a detrimental effect on response selection (e.g., Lorist et al, 2000; Van der Linden et al, 2003; Csathó et al, 2012; Möckel et al, 2015) and it can compromise the efficiency of attentional-shifting mechanisms
Summary
Cognitive or mental fatigue (hereafter fatigue) is a very common everyday phenomenon resulting, for example, from prolonged performance on cognitively demanding task (e.g., during the work day). The psychological manifestation of fatigue has multiple facets including compromised cognitive functioning and task disengagement. The latter includes a reduction in willingness to exert further cognitive effort, which is considered as one of the motivational hallmarks of fatigue (e.g., Van der Linden, 2011). Changes in cognitive performance due to fatigue have predominantly been linked to reduced efficiency of the prefrontal cortex (Lorist et al, 2005; Boksem and Tops, 2008) and prefrontally mediated cognitive functions seem to be sensitive to the detrimental effects of fatigue. It has been suggested that a suboptimal norepinephrine level (i.e., reduced activity of the locus coeruleus norepinephrine system; LC-NE system) may be associated with increased fatigue and decreased task engagement (Hopstaken et al, 2015a,b)
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