Music Intervention on Golfers Under Mental Fatigue

"During the mental fatigue induction phase, a 30-minute Stroop task will artificially induce mental fatigue, simulating the mental fatigue state that athletes experience during competitions or training sessions. The Stroop task is a classic cognitive control task widely used for inducing mental fatigue. Research in sports science has shown that a 30-minute Stroop task significantly increases subjective fatigue and reduces physical performance. This study will use a smartphone-based version of the Stroop task (with brightness and touch sensitivity standardised), where colour words (such as red and blue) are displayed continuously, but the font colour does not match the word's meaning. Participants must ignore the word's meaning and respond only based on the font colour. The Stroop task requires sustained attention, conflict resolution, and cognitive inhibition, leading to cognitive resource depletion and mental fatigue accumulation."

During the music intervention phase, participants will listen to 15 minutes of classical music to facilitate mental fatigue recovery. This study selects Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as the intervention music, a piece that has been applied in previous mental fatigue recovery studies and has been validated as an effective intervention. The intervention duration is set at 15 minutes, as multiple studies have confirmed this duration to be sufficient to produce recovery effects without causing additional cognitive load or auditory fatigue. The music will be played through a smartphone, with the intervention volume controlled at 50-60 dBA. Considering that the maximum volume of a smartphone is approximately 105-113 dBA, the standardised intervention volume is set at 50% (52.5-56.5 dBA) of the smartphone's maximum volume to ensure consistency among all participants.