Aperture Crossing in Virtual Reality: Physical Fatigue Delays Response Time

Area of Science:

• Human movement science
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Virtual reality applications

Background:

• Visual perception and cognitive abilities are crucial for obstacle avoidance.
• Strenuous physical exercise can induce fatigue, potentially impairing cognitive functions.
• The impact of physical fatigue on obstacle avoidance behaviors requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether obstacle avoidance behaviors are negatively affected by physical fatigue.
• To assess the influence of physically fatiguing exercise on passability judgments and response time during an obstacle avoidance task.

Main Methods:

• A virtual reality (VR) closing-gap aperture crossing task was employed.
• Thirteen recreationally active individuals participated in the study.
• Participants completed pre- and post-tests on both a fatiguing day and a control day over a 7-day period.

Main Results:

• No significant differences were observed in passability judgments across trial blocks.
• A significant reduction in response time was noted on the post-test exercise day, indicating slower decision-making.
• Physical fatigue prolonged the time needed to make and execute a decision.

Conclusions:

• Physically fatiguing exercise may detrimentally affect cognitive processes like decision-making (response time) more than visuomotor tasks (passability judgments).
• Tasks requiring greater cortical processing may be more susceptible to performance decrements following strenuous exercise.