The acute effects of mental fatigue on balance performance in healthy young and older adults:A systematic review and meta-analysis

Cognitive resources contribute to balance control. There is evidence that mental fatigue reduces cognitive resources and impairs balance performance, particularly in older adults and when balance tasks are complex, for example when trying to walk or stand while concurrently performing a secondary cognitive task. We conducted a systematic literature search in PubMed (MEDLINE), Web of Science and Google Scholar to identify eligible studies and performed a random effects meta-analysis to quantify the effects of experimentally induced mental fatigue on balance performance in healthy adults. Subgroup analyses were computed for age (healthy young vs. healthy older adults) and balance task complexity (balance tasks with high complexity vs. balance tasks with low complexity) to examine the moderating effects of these factors on fatigue-mediated balance performance. We identified 7 eligible studies with 9 study groups and 206 participants. Analysis revealed that performing a prolonged cognitive task had a small but significant effect (SMDwm = −0.38) on subsequent balance performance in healthy young and older adults. However, age- and task-related differences in balance responses to fatigue could not be confirmed statistically. Overall, aggregation of the available literature indicates that mental fatigue generally reduces balance in healthy adults. However, interactions between cognitive resource reduction, aging and balance task complexity remain elusive

Multitasking strategies make the difference: Separating processing-code resources boosts multitasking efficiency when individuals prefer to interleave tasks in free concurrent dual tasking

Previous research has shown that individuals differ with respect to their preferred strategies in self-organized multitasking: They either prefer to work on one task for long sequences before switching to another (blocking), prefer to switch repeatedly after short sequences (switching), or prefer to respond almost simultaneously after processing the stimuli of two concurrently visible tasks (response grouping). In two experiments, we tested to what extent the choice of strategy and related differences in multitasking efficiency were affected by the between-resource competition (Wickens, 2002) of two tasks to be performed concurrently in a self-organized manner. All participants performed a set of dual tasks that differed with respect to the kind of stimuli (verbal vs. spatial) and/or responses (manual vs. vocal). The choice of strategy was hardly affected as most individuals persisted in their response strategy independent of the degree of resource competition. However, the efficiency of individuals preferring a switching or response-grouping strategy increased especially when the reduction in resource competition was response related (manual vs. vocal), leading even to considerable dual-tasking benefits under these circumstances. In contrast, individuals who preferred to block their responses did not achieve any considerable benefits (or costs) with either of the different dual tasks

The acute effects of mental fatigue on balance performance in healthy young and older adults – A systematic review and meta-analysis

Cognitive resources contribute to balance control. There is evidence that mental fatigue reduces cognitive resources and impairs balance performance, particularly in older adults and when balance tasks are complex, for example when trying to walk or stand while concurrently performing a secondary cognitive task. We conducted a systematic literature search in PubMed (MEDLINE), Web of Science and Google Scholar to identify eligible studies and performed a random effects meta-analysis to quantify the effects of experimentally induced mental fatigue on balance performance in healthy adults. Subgroup analyses were computed for age (healthy young vs. healthy older adults) and balance task complexity (balance tasks with high complexity vs. balance tasks with low complexity) to examine the moderating effects of these factors on fatigue-mediated balance performance. We identified 7 eligible studies with 9 study groups and 206 participants. Analysis revealed that performing a prolonged cognitive task had a small but significant effect (SMDwm = −0.38) on subsequent balance performance in healthy young and older adults. However, age- and task-related differences in balance responses to fatigue could not be confirmed statistically. Overall, aggregation of the available literature indicates that mental fatigue generally reduces balance in healthy adults. However, interactions between cognitive resource reduction, aging and balance task complexity remain elusive