Does a brief mindfulness intervention counteract the detrimental effects of ego depletion in basketball free throw under pressure?

Abstract

3Research has shown that a brief mindfulness intervention may counteract the depleting effects of 4 an emotion suppression task upon a subsequent psychological task that requires self-control. However, 5 the effects of a brief mindfulness intervention on perceptual-motor tasks particularly in stressful 6 situations have not yet been examined. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a brief 7 mindfulness intervention can counteract the detrimental effects of ego-depletion in basketball free throw 8 performance under pressure. Seventy-two basketball players (mean age = 28.6 ± 4.0 yrs) were randomly 9 assigned to one of the following 4 groups: depletion/mindfulness, no depletion/mindfulness, depletion/no 10 mindfulness and control (no depletion/no mindfulness). The mindfulness intervention consisted of a 15-11 min breathe and body mindfulness audio exercise, while the control condition (no mindfulness) listened 12 to an audio book. A modified Stroop color-word task was used to manipulate self-control and induce 13 ego depletion. Participants performed 30 free throws before and after the experimental manipulations. 14 Results showed that basketball players' free throw performance decreased after ego-depletion, but when 15 ego-depletion was followed by the mindfulness intervention, free throw performance was maintained at a 16 level similar to the control group. Our results indicate that a brief mindfulness intervention mitigates the 17 effects of ego depletion in a basketball free-throw task. 18 ). This model has received 43 considerable empirical support in a sport context. For example, it has been shown that a non-sports 44 related primary task that requires cognitive effort, in particular attentional control (e.g., Stroop color 45 word test), leads to self-control failures in a secondary physical task with decreases in repeated maximum 46 4 Bray, 2013). Additionally, in a narrative review, Pageaux and Lepers (2018) confirmed the existence of 50 decrements in sport-related motor tasks after self-control depletion or mental fatigue. Other theoretical 51 models challenge the notion of limited self-control strength, and highlight the importance of identifying 52 other mechanisms through which the actual processes of ego depletion impair performance. For example, 53 according to motivational and attentional shifts theory, exerting self-control in a first task reduces success 54 at self-control at a second task due to shifts in motivation and attention (Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2016). 55However, in a recent empirical study, Baumeister and Vohs (2018) argued that these alternative 56 explanations of ego depletion suggested by other theoretical models, are aligned with the strength model 57 of self-control. Regarding motivational and attentional shifts theory, Baumeister and Vohs (2018) 58 suggested that limited resource theory works better if it is assumed that performance changes caused by 59 ego depletion could be either a direct effect of low energy or an indirect effect mediated by motivational 60 and atte...

Mental Fatigue and Basketball Performance: A Systematic Review

“…Table 3 shows information on the study characteristics, which based on follow aspects: (1) Sample size: In totally, the seven articles had 258 subjects. The sample sizes ranged from 18 (Bahrami et al, 2020 ) to 72 (Shaabani et al, 2020 ) participants, and the mean sample size was 36.9 participants (SD = 23.4). (2) Gender: Most samples only contained males, but one sample (Hepler and Kovacs, 2017 ) had both genders.…”

“…The percentage of female was 13.2% and male was 86.8%. (3) Population classification: Five articles involved trained athletes (Englert et al, 2015 ; López et al, 2017 ; Moreira et al, 2018 ; Bahrami et al, 2020 ; Shaabani et al, 2020 ), but other two included undergraduate students (Hepler and Kovacs, 2017 ) and amateurs (Filipas et al, 2021 ) respectively.…”

“…Two studies used a Stroop task to induce MF. The Stroop task was incongruent (Moreira et al, 2018 ; Shaabani et al, 2020 ) or combined with a Stroop software exercise involving math tests (Bahrami et al, 2020 ). Other studies used other forms of demanding cognitive tasks, such as watching a basketball tactical video (Filipas et al, 2021 ), N-Back tasks (López et al, 2017 ) and transcribing a neutral text with conditions (Englert et al, 2015 ).…”

“…In those situations, self-control was exerted to regulate the pressure experienced and better focus their attention, which increases the possibility of self-control failure in the future, thus leading to ego depletion or MF (Shaabani et al, 2020 ). The duration of the intervention was different across studies, though most studies ranged from 6 to 120 mins (Englert et al, 2015 ; Moreira et al, 2018 ; Bahrami et al, 2020 ; Shaabani et al, 2020 ; Filipas et al, 2021 ). One article, however, only intervened for 30 s (Hepler and Kovacs, 2017 ), and another did not make mention of the duration (López et al, 2017 ).…”

“…Moreira et al (2018) andShaabani et al (2020) used incongruent-modified Stroop color-word tasks of 30 mins to induce mental stress. Stroop tasks are a common way of inducing MF.…”