To fidget or not to fidget: the effect of movement on cognition

Abstract

Previous research suggests that there is controversy regarding the effects of fidgeting. On one hand, fidgeting has been associated with inattention. On the other hand, the act of suppressing movement may have extensive costs to cognitive abilities. Thus, allowing fidgeting might be beneficial for attention. However certain fidgeting behaviors, such as large body movements, might be disruptive in certain situations, like a classroom or an office meeting. Fidget toys have been developed that allow for smaller fidgeting movements that are non-disruptive. Most previous studies have been conducted in an elementary school classroom and have used primarily observational data. Here we examine the effects of suppression or activation of fidgeting on one’s executive functioning in a college population. To suppress fidgeting, participants were told to sit completely still during testing; to activate fidgeting, participants played with a hand held fidget toy during testing; and in a neutral condition, participants were not told to suppress or activate fidgeting. We measured attentional, working memory, and response inhibition performance in easy and hard versions in of two cognitive tasks: the Stroop task, and a visual search task.