The Effects of Mental Fatigue on Physical Performance: A Systematic Review
Method
PubMed and Web of Science searched until 28 April 2016 for studies testing whether mental fatigue (a psychobiological state caused by prolonged demanding cognitive activity) influenced a physical task, or the physiological/perceptual responses during it
11 articles included: six of strong and five of moderate methodological quality
Key Results
11 articles included, six of strong and five of moderate quality; studies using short (<30 min) self-regulatory depletion tasks were excluded (from the abstract).
General finding: a decline in endurance performance associated with a higher than normal perceived exertion; heart rate, blood lactate, oxygen uptake, cardiac output and maximal aerobic capacity unaffected; maximal strength, power and anaerobic work not affected. Detail below.
Findings
Endurance performance declined after mental fatigue: decreased time to exhaustion, lower self-selected power output/velocity, or longer completion time
The decline came with a higher than normal perceived exertion
Physiological variables traditionally tied to endurance (heart rate, blood lactate, oxygen uptake, cardiac output, maximal aerobic capacity) were unaffected
Maximal strength, power and anaerobic work were not affected
Authors' conclusion: the duration and intensity of the physical task appear to determine whether mental fatigue hurts; the most important factor behind the endurance decrement is higher perceived exertion
Practical Application
Across 11 experiments, prior mental fatigue lowered endurance performance (shorter time to exhaustion, lower self-selected power, slower completion) with a higher perceived exertion and no change in heart rate, lactate or oxygen uptake; maximal strength, power and anaerobic work were untouched. Mental fatigue is a real threat to long efforts, not to short maximal ones.
Competition preparation should protect mental recovery as well as physical — the cost shows up as effort feeling harder at the same output
Inference, not tested: long screen or decision-heavy work before a key endurance session is the kind of exposure these experiments modelled; keep it away from the session
Limitations
Heterogeneous task induction (cognitive load protocols vary widely)
Short-term acute experiments dominate; chronic / training effects underrepresented
Selection bias / small-study effects not fully excluded
No meta-analysis — the review reports a direction, not a pooled magnitude
How this entry was checked and changed
Why this level
regraded 2026-09-27 from A: systematic review of 11 small acute experiments, no pooled effect
Content correction 2026-09-27
"Systematic review + meta-analysis", "23 included studies", "ES ~ -0.30 to -0.55" -> the paper is a systematic review without meta-analysis of 11 articles; no effect sizes are pooled. Removed.
"Effect strongest for skill-based / decision-making sports (reaction time, accuracy)", "effect present across recreational and trained populations (elites not all protected)" -> not in the abstract; removed.
Sport line "swimming, sprint" -> general (endurance tasks across modalities); Level A -> A-.
2026-09-28: added a Key Results section from the abstract (Europe PMC, DOI 10.1007/s40279-016-0672-0, PMID 28044281).
2026-09-28: lines labelled "full text; not checked" read against the open-access accepted manuscript (Kent Academic Repository, kar.kent.ac.uk): 0 confirmed, 1 corrected ("mostly recreational and trained" -> healthy, young, moderately trained, VO2max 48-56, De Pauw level 2), 0 removed.