Effects of psychological fatigue on college athletes’ error-related negativity based on artificial intelligence computing method

Abstract

Psychological fatigue includes mental fatigue and burnout. In order to investigate the impact of psychological fatigue on athletes' response monitoring, event-related potentials technique is typically used, and the most critical indicator is error-related negativity. Two experiments were carried out to explore cause-effect relationships of psychological fatigue and response monitoring. The event-related potentials data processing was based on Artificial Intelligence computing methods, including wavelet transform, grayscale transformation and other algorithms. The first experiment was done to explain mental fatigue and response monitoring. 15 participants operated continuously 60 min Flanker task, and then operated 15 min task accompanied by light music. From the results of behavioral performances, the fatigue period compared with the fatigue-free period showed significant differences, including reaction time (p = 0.029) and correct rate (p = 0.046). From the results of error-related negativity, the amplitude of the fatigue-free period was bigger than that of the music adjustment period, the latter was bigger than that of the fatigue period (p < 0.001). The second experiment was conducted to explore burnout and response monitoring. Twenty-four participants were separated averagely into two groups. One group was burnout group, the other group was no burnout group. They both operated 15 min task. From the results of behavioral performances, no burnout group was better than burnout group. From the results of error-related negativity, no burnout group’s amplitude was bigger than that of burnout group, but the difference was marginally significant. The conclusions are as follows: Artificial intelligence technology is feasible for processing event-related potentials data. Psychological fatigue weakens athletes’ response monitoring ability, and the effect of mental fatigue is significant. In future researches, the following topics should be concerned, including the mediating or moderating effects of third variables, different ways of recovering from mental fatigue, computer data simulator and date accuracy, brain-computer interfaces and error-related negativity, etc.