Directed Attention Fatigue - Stress Vs. Mental Fatigue

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:

  1. Involuntary attention refers to attention that requires no effort at all, as when something exciting or interesting happens.
  2. Voluntary attention, or directed attention, refers to attention that requires a great deal of effort, as when something is monotonous or boring.

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