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Short-term cognitive fatigue effect on auditory temporal order judgments.

ABSTRACT: Fatigue is a core symptom in many psychological disorders and it can strongly influence everyday productivity. As fatigue effects have been typically demonstrated after long hours of time on task, it was surprising that in a previous study, we accidentally found a decline of temporal order judgment (TOJ) performance within 5-8 min. After replicating prior relevant findings we tested whether pauses and/or feedback relating the participant's performance to some "standard" can eliminate or reduce this short-term performance decline. We also assessed whether the performance decline is specific to the processes evoked by the TOJ task or it is a product of either general inattentiveness or the lack of willingness to thoroughly follow the task instructions. We found that both feedback and introducing pauses between successive measurements can largely reduce the performance decline, and that these two manipulations likely mobilize overlapping capacities. Performance decline was not present in a similar task when controlling for the TOJ threshold and it was not a result of uncooperative behavior. Therefore, we conclude that the TOJ threshold decline is either specific to temporal processing in general or to the TOJ task employed in the study. Overall, the results are compatible with the notion that the decline of TOJ threshold with repeated measures represents a short-term cognitive fatigue effect. This objective fatigue measure did not correlate with subjective fatigue. The latter was rather related to perceived difficulty/effort, the reduction of positive affectivity, heightened sensitivity to criticism, and the best TOJ threshold.

SUBMITTER: Simon J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7007914 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:A considerable body of sensory research has addressed the rules governing simultaneity judgments (SJs) and temporal order judgments (TOJs). In principle, neural events that register stimulus-arrival-time differences at an early sensory stage could set the limit on SJs and TOJs alike. Alternatively, distinct limits on SJs and TOJs could arise from task-specific neural events occurring after the stimulus-driven stage. To distinguish between these possibilities, we developed a novel reaction-time (RT) measure and tested it in a perceptual-learning procedure. The stimuli comprised dual-stream Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) displays. Participants judged either the simultaneity or temporal order of red-letter and black-number targets presented in opposite lateral hemifield streams of black-letter distractors. Despite identical visual stimulation across-tasks, the SJ and TOJ tasks generated distinct RT patterns. SJs exhibited significantly faster RTs to synchronized targets than to subtly asynchronized targets; TOJs exhibited the opposite RT pattern. These task-specific RT patterns cannot be attributed to the early, stimulus-driven stage and instead match what one would predict if the limits on SJs and TOJs arose from task-specific decision spaces. That is, synchronized targets generate strong evidence for simultaneity, which hastens SJ RTs. By contrast, synchronized targets provide no information about temporal order, which slows TOJ RTs. Subtly asynchronizing the targets reverses this information pattern, and the corresponding RT patterns. In addition to investigating RT patterns, we also investigated training-transfer between the tasks. Training to improve SJ precision failed to improve TOJ precision, and vice versa, despite identical visual stimulation across tasks. This, too, argues against early, stimulus-driven limits on SJs and TOJs. Taken together, the present study offers novel evidence that distinct rules set the limits on SJs and TOJs.

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Short-term cognitive fatigue effect on auditory temporal order judgments.

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