Effect of Standing or Walking at a Workstation on Cognitive Function: A Randomized Counterbalanced Trial.

OBJECTIVE: In the present study, we examined the effect of working while seated, while standing, or while walking on measures of short-term memory, working memory, selective and sustained attention, and information-processing speed. BACKGROUND: The advent of computer-based technology has revolutionized the adult workplace, such that average adult full-time employees spend the majority of their working day seated. Prolonged sitting is associated with increasing obesity and chronic health conditions in children and adults. One possible intervention to reduce the negative health impacts of the modern office environment involves modifying the workplace to increase incidental activity and exercise during the workday. Although modifications, such as sit-stand desks, have been shown to improve physiological function, there is mixed information regarding the impact of such office modification on individual cognitive performance and thereby the efficiency of the work environment. METHOD: In a fully counterbalanced randomized control trial, we assessed the cognitive performance of 45 undergraduate students for up to a 1-hr period in each condition. RESULTS: The results indicate that there is no significant change in the measures used to assess cognitive performance associated with working while seated, while standing, or while walking at low intensity. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that cognitive performance is not degraded with short-term use of alternate workstations.

A randomised control trial of the cognitive effects of working in a seated as opposed to a standing position in office workers.

Sedentary behaviour is increasing and has been identified as a potential significant health risk, particularly for desk-based employees. The development of sit-stand workstations in the workplace is one approach to reduce sedentary behaviour. However, there is uncertainty about the effects of sit-stand workstations on cognitive functioning. A sample of 36 university staff participated in a within-subjects randomised control trial examining the effect of sitting vs. standing for one hour per day for five consecutive days on attention, information processing speed, short-term memory, working memory and task efficiency. The results of the study showed no statistically significant difference in cognitive performance or work efficiency between the sitting and standing conditions, with all effect sizes being small to very small (all ds < .2). This result suggests that the use of sit-stand workstations is not associated with a reduction in cognitive performance. Practitioner Summary: Although it has been reported that the use of sit-stand desks may help offset adverse health effects of prolonged sitting, there is scant evidence about changes in productivity. This randomised control study showed that there was no difference between sitting and standing for one hour on cognitive function or task efficiency in university staff.

Acute Physical Exercise Can Influence the Accuracy of Metacognitive Judgments.

Acute exercise generally benefits memory but little research has examined how exercise affects metacognition (knowledge of memory performance). We show that a single bout of exercise can influence metacognition in paired-associate learning. Participants completed 30-min of moderate-intensity exercise before or after studying a series of word pairs (cloud-ivory), and completed cued-recall (cloud-?; Experiments 1 & 2) and recognition memory tests (cloud-? spoon; ivory; drill; choir; Experiment 2). Participants made judgments of learning prior to cued-recall tests (JOLs; predicted likelihood of recalling the second word of each pair when shown the first) and feeling-of-knowing judgments prior to recognition tests (FOK; predicted likelihood of recognizing the second word from four alternatives). Compared to no-exercise control conditions, exercise before encoding enhanced cued-recall in Experiment 1 but not Experiment 2 and did not affect recognition. Exercise after encoding did not influence memory. In conditions where exercise did not benefit memory, it increased JOLs and FOK judgments relative to accuracy (Experiments 1 & 2) and impaired the relative accuracy of JOLs (ability to distinguish remembered from non-remembered items; Experiment 2). Acute exercise seems to signal likely remembering; this has implications for understanding the effects of exercise on metacognition, and for incorporating exercise into study routines.