Studies suggest that when people mentally rehearse a physical action, they engage similar neural and cognitive operations as when they actually perform the action. Because of this, mental imaging can be a valuable training tool. A new study explores how actual muscle fatigue affects mental imaging. In the study, participants were asked to either perform actual arm pointing motions or to mentally imagine equivalent arm pointing motions. Participants then developed muscle fatigue by holding a heavy weight out horizontally as long as they could. After becoming fatigued, they were asked to repeat the previous mental or actual motions. Eight participants were assigned to each group, and the time in seconds to complete the motions is given in Table C.4 and stored in MentalMuscle. Use a 5% significance level for all tests.

Table C.4

(a) Test to see whether there is a significant difference in mean times between mentally imaging doing the actions and actually doing the actions before any muscle fatigue (pre-fatigue).

(b) Test to see whether people who actually perform the motions are slower, on average, post-fatigue than pre-fatigue.

(c) Test to see whether people who mentally perform the motions are faster, on average, at mentally imaging the actions post-fatigue than pre-fatigue.

(d) Test to see whether there is a significant difference in mean times between mentally imaging doing the actions and actually doing the actions, after experiencing muscle fatigue (post-fatigue). 

(e) Write a short paragraph summarizing the results of the experiment.

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Mental pre-fatigue Mental post-fatigue Actual pre-fatigue Actual post-fatigue 6.9 5.4 8.4 7.4 5.9 7.4 9.9 8.1 7.2 6.6 5.5 6.2 6.7 6.6 6.8 7.5 7.2 7.2 4.6 6.1 6.0 7.3 7.8 7.1 7.6 6.5 9.3 7.8 7.8 9.8 6.4 8.1