Bantoft and her colleagues investigated the cognitive implications of doing knowledge work while standing or walking; their research supports findings already published by others. The Bantoft team “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…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…These results indicate that cognitive performance is not degraded with short-term use of alternate workstations.” The researchers “assessed the cognitive performance of 45 undergraduate students for up to a 1-hr period in each condition.”
Christina Bantoft, Mathew Summers, Paul Tranent, Matthew Palmer, P. Cooley, and Scott Pedersen. “Effect of Standing or Walking at a Workstation on Cognitive Function: A Randomized Counterbalanced Trial.” Human Factors, in press.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.