Finch and her colleagues assessed how standing influences reading comprehension and creativity. They report on the findings of their lab experiment: study “participants completed reading comprehension and creativity tasks while both sitting and standing. Participants self-reported their mood during the tasks and also responded to measures of expended effort and task difficulty…body position did not affect reading comprehension or creativity performance, nor did it affect perceptions of effort or [task] difficulty…Participants exhibited greater task engagement (i.e., interest, enthusiasm and alertness) and less comfort while standing rather than sitting. In sum, performance and psychological experience as related to task completion were nearly entirely uninfluenced by…standing desk use.” Study participants first stood or sat while taking a set of reading comprehension and creativity tests and then changed to the alternate position (those sitting down stood up and those standing up sat down) to complete additional reading comprehension and creativity tests. Participants, on average, spent about 30 minutes standing and about 30 minutes seated during the study.
Laura Finch, A. Tomiyama, and Andrew Ward. 2017. “Take a Stand: The Effects of Standing Desks on Task Performance and Engagement.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 14, no. 8, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5580641/.
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.