Research Design Connection: Standing and Thinking

Rosenbaum and his colleagues evaluated how our mental performance is influenced by whether we are standing or sitting – their findings have added importance as people are being urged to spend more time standing and changing positions. The team found that people standing have more cognitive control and that their selective attention systems function more effectively than people who are sitting. Selective attention is our ability to react to stimuli of particular concern to us when we’re experiencing several different stimuli simultaneously. In more technical terms: “we examined…the effect of standing as opposed to sitting on the selectivity of attention. To gauge the selectivity of attention, we used psychology’s classic tool, the Stroop effect: the larger the Stroop effect, the greater the failure of selective attention to the target attribute…The most revealing feature of the data was the decrease in the Stroop effect when participants were standing.”

David Rosenbaum, Yaniv Mama, and Daniel Algom. “Stand By Your Stroop: Standing Up Enhances Selective Attention and Cognitive Control.” Psychological Science, 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.