Effects of mental fatigue on basketball decision-making and visual search behavior.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated the effects of mental fatigue on basketball decision-making performance and visual search behavior, with particular emphasis on whether these effects vary as a function of skill level. METHODS: A 3 (skill level: high-skill, intermediate, novice) × 2 (fatigue status: fatigued, non-fatigued) between-subjects factorial design was employed. Sixty male university students (mean age ≈ 20.2 years) were classified according to basketball skill level as high-skill, intermediate, or novice. Participants completed basketball decision-making tasks based on game footage, in which they were required to decide whether to shoot, pass, or drive while their eye movements were recorded. Mental fatigue was induced prior to testing through a demanding cognitive task. The primary eye-tracking measures were fixation count, mean fixation duration, and saccade count. In addition, scanpaths and heatmaps were examined to provide qualitative insights into visual-search behavior. Quantitative data were analyzed using separate two-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs). RESULTS: High-skill players demonstrated faster and more accurate responses than intermediate- and novice-skill participants. They also exhibited shorter fixation durations and fewer saccades, a pattern that may be consistent with more selective and economical visual search. Mental fatigue slowed reaction times overall; however, this effect was most pronounced among novice participants, whereas high-skill players appeared comparatively less affected. Saccade count decreased under fatigue, whereas mean fixation duration remained unchanged, suggesting that fatigue-related effects may have been more evident in gaze-shifting measures than in the fixation-based measure assessed here. CONCLUSION: Skill level plays a critical role in shaping both decision-making performance and visual-search behavior in basketball. Although mental fatigue may constrain aspects of visual exploration, more skilled players appeared better able to maintain performance under the present task conditions. These findings suggest that expertise may be associated with reduced vulnerability to fatigue-related performance decline under mentally fatiguing conditions.