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Prior Mental Fatigue Impairs Marksmanship Decision Performance.

James Head¹, Matthew S Tenan², Andrew J Tweedell²

¹United States Army Research Laboratory, Human Research and Engineering Directorate, Dismounted Soldier and Team Performance BranchAberdeen Proving Ground, MD, United States.

Frontiers in Physiology

|September 28, 2017

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Mental fatigue impairs soldiers' marksmanship judgment, increasing decision errors in live-fire scenarios. While shot accuracy remains unaffected, cognitive load significantly impacts performance.

Keywords:

HRV fine-motor performance live-fire marksmanship decision accuracy response inhibition intervention soldiers

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Area of Science:

Military science
Cognitive psychology
Human performance

Background:

Mental fatigue is known to degrade physical performance.
Its impact on fine-motor skills in applied settings, like military marksmanship, is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the effect of mental fatigue on marksmanship performance in trained soldiers.
To assess changes in shooting accuracy and decision-making during live-fire engagements.

Main Methods:

Twenty infantry soldiers participated in a repeated-measure design, undergoing both mental fatigue and control interventions.
Physiological (heart rate variability) and subjective (NASA-TLX) measures assessed fatigue.
Marksmanship was evaluated through accuracy (grouping, precision) and decision-making (shot/no-shot accuracy).

Main Results:

The mental fatigue intervention increased subjective mental workload and decreased heart rate variability.
No significant differences were found in projectile group accuracy or precision between conditions.
Marksmanship decision errors significantly increased by 48% after mental fatigue compared to 32% in the control.

Conclusions:

The mental fatigue protocol effectively induced fatigue, confirmed by subjective and objective measures.
Mental fatigue significantly impairs soldiers' marksmanship judgment and decision-making accuracy.
Fine-motor accuracy in shooting is not demonstrably affected by mental fatigue in this context.