The Effect Of Mental Fatigue On Working Memory Capacity In Different-aged Males

Mental fatigue is an inevitable feeling of people after a long period of mental work,and now excessive working has been a common phenomenon,which not only impair people's health condition,but also cause low efficiency.With aging population increasing and the retirement age delayed,more and more staff are experiencing cognitive aging and fatigue.In this study,using verbal working memory span task and the spatial working memory span task respectively,the effect of cognitive fatigue on the working memory span of males mainly during 55-69 years old and 25-34 years old was explored.Experiment 1 mainly examined the effect of mental fatigue on verbal working memory capacity in different ages.The TOT paradigm was used to induce mental fatigue.The subjects were divided into four groups according to their age and measured by operation span task and reading span task.The results showed that:(1)TOT main effect was significant.The difference between the first and second period was not significant,and the operation span of the third period is significantly smaller than that of the second period.The reading span of the second period was significantly smaller than that of the first period,and the difference between the second period and the third period was not significant;(2)operation span of the young group was significantly larger than that of the 55-59,60-64 and 65-69 age groups.Reading capacity of the young groups was significantly larger than that of the 60-64,65-69 age group.Both operation span and reading span of 55-59 age group were significantly larger than the 60-64,65-69 age group;(3)the interaction between cognitive fatigue and age was significant,which was mainly manifested in reading span.TOT effect was significant in the 55-59,60-64 and 65-69 age groups,but not in the young group.Experiment 2 mainly examined the effect of mental fatigue on spatial working memory capacity in different ages.The subjects were divided into four groups according to their age.The TOT paradigm was used to induce mental fatigue.The subjects were measured by symmetric span task and rotation span task.The results showed that:(1)the main effect of TOT is significant,the symmetry span of the second period was significantly smaller than that of the first period,and the symmetry span of the third period was significantly smaller than that of the second period.The difference of rotation span between the first and second periods is not significant,and the rotationspan of the second period was significantly larger than that of the third period;(2)the symmetry span and rotation span of the young subjects were significantly larger than those of the 55-59,60-64 and 65-69 age groups.The symmetry span decreased significantly at 55-59,60-64 and 65-69 years,and the rotation span decreased with age.There was no significant difference between age group 55-59 and age group 60-64;(3)mental fatigue has a significant effect on the spatial working memory of each age group,and does not aggravate the age effect of spatial working memory.In this study,the negative effects of cognitive fatigue on working memory capacity were examined by two experiments,and the effects on subjects of different age were various.It mainly reflected that in comparison with the young group,cognitive fatigue had a significant impact on the reading span of the 55-69 aged males.