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)
“You don’t want to be an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions, so as to get a mental thrill out of them. It is all purely secondary—and more decadent than the most hide-bound intellectualism.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“I thank heaven that the 4th. of July is over. It is always a day of great fatigue to me, and of some embarrassments from improper intrusions and some from unintended exclusions.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)