Music Intervention on Golfers Under Mental Fatigue

Summary

This study aims to evaluate the effects of music intervention on golf-specific skill performance under mental fatigue. It is a randomised, controlled, double-blind design. The study consists of three main phases: familiarisation with the experimental procedure, baseline testing, and the formal experiment. During the formal experiment, participants will be randomly assigned to one of the following three groups: (MF-Mu Group) Participants undergo a mental fatigue induction task followed by a music intervention; (MF-nMu Group) Participants undergo a mental fatigue induction task but do not receive a music intervention; (CON Group) Participants neither undergo a mental fatigue induction task nor receive a music intervention. The total intervention duration is 45 minutes, consisting of 30 minutes of mental fatigue induction and 15 minutes of music intervention. In conditions where mental fatigue induction or music intervention is not conducted, participants will remain in the same experimental environment and rest quietly for the same duration to control for external confounding factors and ensure experimental consistency. Immediately after the intervention, participants will complete golf skill testing, with the testing site located within a 2 minutes walking distance from the intervention area. Performance outcomes include driving performance, iron shot performance, chipping performance, and putting performance.

Conditions

• Mental Fatigue

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Inducing mental fatigue

During the mental fatigue induction phase, a 30-minute Stroop task will artificially induce mental fatigue, simulating the mental fatigue state that athletes experience during competitions or training sessions. The Stroop task is a classic cognitive control task widely used for inducing mental fatigue. Research in sports science has shown that a 30-minute Stroop task significantly increases subjective fatigue and reduces physical performance. This study will use a smartphone-based version of the Stroop task (with brightness and touch sensitivity standardised), where colour words (such as "red" and "blue") are displayed continuously, but the font colour does not match the word's meaning. Participants must ignore the word's meaning and respond only based on the font colour. The Stroop task requires sustained attention, conflict resolution, and cognitive inhibition, leading to cognitive resource depletion and mental fatigue accumulation.

BEHAVIORAL

Music intervention

During the music intervention phase, participants will listen to 15 minutes of classical music to facilitate mental fatigue recovery. This study selects Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as the intervention music, a piece that has been applied in previous mental fatigue recovery studies and has been validated as an effective intervention. The intervention duration is set at 15 minutes, as multiple studies have confirmed this duration to be sufficient to produce recovery effects without causing additional cognitive load or auditory fatigue. The music will be played through a smartphone, with the intervention volume controlled at 50-60 dBA. Considering that the maximum volume of a smartphone is approximately 105-113 dBA, the standardised intervention volume is set at 50% (52.5-56.5 dBA) of the smartphone's maximum volume to ensure consistency among all participants.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Pan Xiaoyang

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Kim Geok Soh, Prof. Dr. · Department of Sport Studies, Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

TRIPLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

24 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-09-01

Primary Completion

2025-12-01

Completion

2025-12-01

Countries

• Malaysia

Study Locations