The delayed effect of treadmill desk usage on recall and attention

The treadmill desk is a new human computer interaction (HCI) setup intended to reduce the time workers spend sitting. As most workers will not choose to spend their entire workday walking, this study investigated the short-term delayed effect of treadmill desk usage. An experiment was conducted in which participants either sat or walked while they read a text and received emails. Afterward, all participants performed a task to evaluate their attention and memory. Behavioral, neurophysiological, and perceptual evidence showed that participants who walked had a short-term increase in memory and attention, indicating that the use of a treadmill desk has a delayed effect. These findings suggest that the treadmill desk, in addition to having health benefits for workers, can also be beneficial for businesses by enhancing workforce performance. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).