ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1655221
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Cognitive Era in Sports Performance: Mental Fatigue, Cognitive Training, Sleep and Psychological Ergogenic Substances-Volume IIView all 11 articles
Investigating the isolated effects of a soccer-specific mental fatigue manipulation on different task types
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Sport Psychology, Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany
- 2Department of Sport Pedagogy, Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany
- 3Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
- 4Department of Physiology, TSG ResearchLab gGmbH, Zuzenhausen, Germany
- 5Department of Psychology, TSG ResearchLab gGmbH, Zuzenhausen, Germany
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Abstract Introduction: Mental fatigue negatively impacts athletic performance, but commonly employed tasks like the Stroop task often lack ecological validity. This study aimed to validate a modified, soccer-specific Footbonaut task as a mental fatigue manipulation and examine its effects on following tasks representing task-specific, near-, and far-transfer domains. Methods: A randomized, counterbalanced within-subject design was implemented with n = 24 soccer players. Participants completed a Footbonaut task (task-specific), the LSPT (near-transfer), and the Stroop task (far-transfer) before and after mental fatigue manipulation via the Footbonaut. Results: Inconsistencies emerged between interaction effects and post-hoc tests, showing no clear negative effect of the manipulation on accuracy or response times. The employed mental fatigue manipulation did not differentially affect the three tasks, indicating a lack of transfer effects. Discussion: Although mental fatigue was not successfully induced by the sport-specific Footbonaut task, the findings emphasize the need for ecologically valid, innovative methods to better understand mental fatigue in sports.
Keywords: Mental Fatigue, mental effort, Technical performance, cognitive performance, Soccer, transfer effect, team sport
Received: 27 Jun 2025; Accepted: 01 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Weiler, Ennigkeit, Altmann, Steindorf, Spielmann and Englert. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Helena Weiler, Department of Sport Psychology, Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany
Stefan Altmann, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
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