Mental Fatigue, Attentional Focus, and Countermovement Jump Performance | NCT07779304 | Trialant

Not yet recruitingInterventionalNot ApplicableUpdated Aug 21, 2026

Mental Fatigue, Attentional Focus, and Countermovement Jump Performance

The Effects of Acute Mental Fatigue and Attentional Focus Instructions on Countermovement Jump Performance

Overview

Key facts that identify this study and show where it stands today.

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT07779304
Lead Sponsor: Inonu UniversityOTHER
Overall Status: Not yet recruiting
Study Type: Interventional
Phase: Not Applicable
Enrollment: 32Estimated
Last Update Posted: Aug 21, 2026Actual
Start Date: Sep 1, 2026Estimated
Primary Completion Date: Oct 1, 2026Estimated
Completion Date: Nov 1, 2026Estimated

Description

What the study is about and why it is being run, in the researchers' own words.

Official Title: The Effects of Acute Mental Fatigue and Attentional Focus Instructions on Countermovement Jump Performance
Brief Summary: This study examines whether short-term mental fatigue and different jump instructions affect how high people can jump. Thirty-two physically active university students will complete two testing sessions in random order: one after a 30-minute mentally tiring computer task and one after a 30-minute relaxing video. In both sessions, participants will perform vertical jumps while receiving one of three types of instructions: no special instruction, focusing on their own body movements, or focusing on pushing the ground away. The study will compare jump height across these conditions to better understand how mental tiredness and coaching cues affect jumping performance, which may help coaches and athletes design better training and competition preparation.
Detailed Description

Conditions

The medical conditions and diseases this study investigates.

Mental Fatigue
Athletic Performance

Interventions

The treatments and procedures being evaluated in this study.

Mental-Fatigue Protocol (Stroop Task)
Control Protocol (Nature Video)
No Prescribed Focus Instruction

Participation

Who can join this study and the criteria used to decide.

Ages Eligible for Study: Adult (18-64)
Sexes Eligible for Study: All
Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
Eligibility Criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

Age 18-30 years

Third- or fourth-year undergraduate student in the Faculty of Sport Sciences, İnönü University

Engaged in structured physical activity on at least 2 days per week

Normal or corrected-to-normal vision and normal color vision

Able to safely perform maximal vertical jumps

Exclusion Criteria:

Major lower-extremity surgery or injury

Musculoskeletal injury during the preceding 6 months that could affect jumping

Diagnosed neurological, psychiatric, or cardiovascular disorder

Regular use of medication that could influence alertness, fatigue, cardiovascular responses, or neuromuscular performance

Any health condition compromising safety or measurement validity

Design

How the study is designed and how its participant groups are organized.

Primary Purpose: Basic Science
Allocation: Randomized
Interventional Model: Crossover Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)

Contacts

The people to reach with questions about this study or how to join it.

No central contacts

There are no central contacts for this study.

Locations

Where the study is run and whether each site is currently recruiting.

İnönü University, Faculty of Sport Sciences

Malatya, 44280, Turkey (Türkiye)

Collaborators

The organizations and people involved in this study.

Lead Sponsor: Inonu UniversityOTHER

Similar Studies

Other registered studies that closely resemble this one.

This study uses a sex-stratified, randomized, counterbalanced crossover design with repeated measures to examine the effects of acute mental fatigue and attentional-focus instructions on countermovement jump (CMJ) performance. Thirty-two physically active undergraduate students (16 women, 16 men), aged 18-30 years, will be enrolled from the Faculty of Sport Sciences at İnönü University, Malatya, Türkiye.

Each participant will complete two experimental protocols, separated by at least 72 hours: a control protocol (approximately 30 minutes of passive viewing of a narration-free nature video) and a mental-fatigue protocol (a 30-minute computerized color-word Stroop interference task). Protocol order will be randomized and stratified by sex. In both protocols, participants will perform CMJs under three attentional-focus conditions, presented in a randomized order that is held constant within each participant across sessions: no prescribed focus, internal focus (attention directed to the participant's own body movements), and external focus (attention directed to the effect of movement on the environment). CMJ height will be recorded in centimeters using a validated video-based jump-analysis application (My Jump Lab) on a tablet camera recording at 240 frames per second, with the higher of two valid trials retained as the primary outcome for each protocol-by-focus condition.

Subjective mental fatigue will be assessed immediately before and after each protocol using a 0-10 visual analogue scale to confirm the effectiveness of the fatigue manipulation. Stroop task performance (total trials, accuracy) and adherence to the assigned attentional-focus instructions will be recorded as secondary measures.

The primary analysis will use a 2 (protocol: control, mental fatigue) x 3 (focus: no prescribed, internal, external) x 2 (sex: women, men) mixed-model ANOVA on CMJ height, with protocol and focus as within-participant factors and sex as a between-participant factor. Reporting will follow CONSORT 2025 and the CONSORT extension for randomized crossover trials.