Stress Vs. Mental Fatigue
The concept of stress is used in many situations that would be described as mental fatigue, but two concepts are distinctly different. Stress involves preparation for an anticipated event that has been evaluated as being threatening or harmful. Though mental fatigue may well result from such circumstances, it also arises out of hard work on a project one enjoys. In such cases, there is no anticipation involved and no threat of harm is present. Characteristic of mental fatigue is difficulty focusing. For a mentally fatigued person, paying attention to something uninteresting is burdensome, even though focusing on something of great interest poses no particular challenge. Hence, there are two types of attention, distinguished in terms of the effort involved in their use and their changes in attentional shift:
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- Involuntary attention refers to attention that requires no effort at all, as when something exciting or interesting happens.
- Voluntary attention, or directed attention, refers to attention that requires a great deal of effort, as when something is monotonous or boring.
Read more about this topic: Directed Attention Fatigue
Famous quotes containing the words stress, mental and/or fatigue:
“A society which is clamoring for choice, which is filled with many articulate groups, each urging its own brand of salvation, its own variety of economic philosophy, will give each new generation no peace until all have chosen or gone under, unable to bear the conditions of choice. The stress is in our civilization.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“Cultivate the habit of thinking ahead, and of anticipating the necessary and immediate consequences of all your actions.... Likewise in your pleasures, ask yourself what such and such an amusement leads to, as it is essential to have an objective in everything you do. Any pastime that contributes nothing to bodily strength or to mental alertness is a totally ridiculous, not to say, idiotic, pleasure.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“I have just read your dispatch about sore tongued and fatiegued [sic] horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietem that fatigue anything?”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)