Engagement of mental effort in response to mental fatigue: A psychophysiological analysis.

Acute mental fatigue, characterized by a transient decline in cognitive efficiency during or following prolonged cognitive tasks, can be managed through adaptive effort deployment. In response to mental fatigue, individuals can employ two main behavioral patterns: engaging a compensatory effort to limit performance decrements, or disengaging effort, leading to performance deterioration. This study investigated the behavioral pattern used by participants in mental fatigue conditions.

A plausible link between the time-on-task effect and the sequential task effect.

Mental fatigue can be studied by using either the time-on-task protocol or the sequential task protocol. In the time-on-task protocol, participants perform a long and effortful task and a decrease in performance in this task is generally observed over time. In the sequential task protocol, a first effortful or control task is followed by a second effortful task.