Abstract
Background: Mental fatigue is a psychobiological state caused by prolonged and/or intense periods of cognitive exertion, characterized by changes in behavioural, cognitive, and/or physiological responses. Recent studies have shown that mental fatigue has a detrimental effect on aerobic sports such as swimming. Most studies have found that mental fatigue hinders swimming performance, but none were free from bias.
Objectives: There were three main objectives of this thesis: (1) To examine the effects of mental fatigue on swimming performance, (2) to explore the effects of prolonged social media exposure on swimming performance, and (3) to assess whether the effects of prolonged social media exposure on swimming performance were similar to the effects of mental fatigue on swimming performance.
Methods: 15 competitive swimmers (aged 18-25 years) took part in a crossover randomised control trial with 4 experimental conditions: Baseline (B), Documentary (D), Mental Fatigue (MF), and Social Media (SM). Participants maintained the average speed of their 200m Freestyle personal-best time for as long as possible after each condition. The relationship between condition and swim duration was analysed using a mixed effects model.
Results: Differences in swim duration between condition MF and condition B were not significant (p>0.05). However, condition MF was estimated to decrease swim duration by a range of 10.40s (p<0.01) to 12.15s (p<0.01) compared to condition D. Swimmers were estimated to last 10.42s longer (p<0.05) and 10.91s shorter (p<0.01) in condition SM compared to conditions B and D, respectively.
Conclusion: Although both mental fatigue and prolonged social media exposure seem to decrease swimming performance, the findings indicate that mental fatigue causes greater detriments in swimming performance compared to social media exposure. Surprisingly, condition B seemed to cause similar detriments in swimming performance to mental fatigue exposure. These are important findings, but further research is necessary to validate the current study.