Work Hard, Play Harder: Intense Games Enable Recovery from High Mental Workload Tasks

Zhao, Linqi; Knierim, Michael T.; Wilson, Max L.; Dickinson, Patrick; Maior, Horia A.

Abstract

Playing games has been shown to be an effective method of post- work recovery. Previous research has shown that gameplay with high cognitive involvement is effective for recovery. This finding conflicts with models of mental workload (MWL), which suggest that people feel best when cycling between high and low MWL. To unpack the relationship between recovery and mental workload, we designed a lab experiment where 40 participants experienced different combinations of high and low MWL while undertaking both work tasks and recovery gameplay, and we collected both self- report and physiological (fNIRS) data. Results showed that high and low MWL games created different impacts on recovery, depending on the MWL of the prior work task. While fNIRS measurements of MWL varied as expected during work tasks, experience of MWL when playing games was not evident in the prefrontal cortex. We conclude by discussing the relationship between mental workload and theories of recovery.

Citation

Zhao, L., Knierim, M. T., Wilson, M. L., Dickinson, P., & Maior, H. A. (2025, April). Work Hard, Play Harder: Intense Games Enable Recovery from High Mental Workload Tasks. Presented at CHI '25: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama, Japan

• Presentation Conference Type: Edited Proceedings
• Conference Name: CHI '25: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• Start Date: Apr 26, 2025
• End Date: May 1, 2025
• Acceptance Date: Mar 4, 2025
• Online Publication Date: Apr 25, 2025
• Publication Date: Apr 26, 2025
• Deposit Date: Mar 7, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 25, 2025
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• ISBN: 9798400713941
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713915
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/46194990
• External URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713915