Mental Fatigue Impairs Visuomotor Response Time in Badminton Players and Controls

Purpose

It has recently been reported that professional road cyclists have superior inhibitory control and resistance to mental fatigue compared to recreational cyclists. We sought to assess whether badminton players also have superior executive functions and whether they are more resistant to mental fatigue than controls on a visuomotor task.

Conclusion

These findings provide evidence that badminton players have better visuomotor response time than controls. However, they do not seem to be more resistant to the negative effects of mental fatigue on open skill-visuomotor performance. Furthermore, our study suggests that cognitive tasks with a larger motor component, such as our visuomotor task, are more sensitive to the negative effects of mental fatigue than traditional cognitive tasks (e.g. Flanker task) that have a very small motor component.