Does Reducing Sedentarity With Standing Desks Hinder Cognitive Performance?

Objective: The goal of this study was to determine if using a standing desk would affect the productivity of workers, based on the type of work they perform.

Background: Standing desks are a promising new health intervention in the workplace, but users and employers often require more specific recommendations related to productivity, such as the type of work that is more suited for the standing desk.

Method: Thirty-seven young and healthy adults performed eight cognitive tasks in a 2 × 2 × 2 within-subject design of the following independent variables: posture (sitting/standing), task difficulty (easy/hard), and input device (computer mouse/tactile screen) in a counterbalanced order.

Results: Our results revealed that using a standing desk had no negative effect on performance or perception, but it did lead to increased brain activity in the alpha band for the parietal region (β = 0.186, = .001).

Conclusion: We conclude that users of standing desks can freely stand for any level of task difficulty for work that involves working memory. However, more research is needed to generalize these results to other types of cognitive abilities and prolonged use of standing desks.

Application: Our results simplify recommendations for workers as they do not need to worry about the type of work they are performing when using a standing desk.