Methodological Considerations and Effectiveness for Ecologically Valid Mental Fatigue Inducement in Sports: A Systematic Review

This systematic review evaluated MF inducement methodologies with greater ecological validity to sporting contexts. The inducement effectiveness varied within four task types. Athletes and sports practitioners should carefully manage the modality and content of pre-competition activities to minimize MF. Future research should refine and co-design the MF-inducing task with practitioners based on multifaceted MF evidence from laboratory and real-life settings, create immersive scenarios that can better replicate the inducement process in specific contexts, and improve measurement tools, which will provide comprehensive evaluation and verification of the MF inducement.