Background With nearly 20% of the US adult population using fitness trackers, there is an increasing focus on how physiological data from these devices can provide actionable insights about workplace performance. However, in-the-wild studies that understand how these metrics correlate with cognitive performance measures across a diverse population are lacking, and claims made by device manufacturers are vague. While there has been extensive research leading to a variety of theories on how physiological measures affect cognitive performance, virtually all such studies have been conducted in highly controlled settings and their validity in the real world is poorly understood. Objective We seek to bridge this gap by evaluating prevailing theories on the effects of a variety of sleep, activity, and heart rate parameters on cognitive performance against data collected in real-world settings. Methods We used a Fitbit Charge 3 and a smartphone app to collect different physiological and neurobehavioral task data, respectively, as part of our 6-week-long in-the-wild study. We collected data from 24 participants across multiple population groups (shift workers, regular workers, and graduate students) on different performance measures (vigilant attention and cognitive throughput). Simultaneously, we used a fitness tracker to unobtrusively obtain physiological measures that could influence these performancemore »
Fitness tracking reveals task-specific associations between memory, mental health, and physical activity
Physical activity can benefit both physical and mental well-being. Different forms of exercise (e.g., aerobic versus anaerobic; running versus walking, swimming, or yoga; high-intensity interval training versus endurance workouts; etc.) impact physical fitness in different ways. For example, running may substantially impact leg and heart strength but only moderately impact arm strength. We hypothesized that the mental benefits of physical activity might be similarly differentiated. We focused specifically on how different intensities of physical activity might relate to different aspects of memory and mental health. To test our hypothesis, we collected (in aggregate) roughly a century’s worth of fitness data. We then asked participants to fill out surveys asking them to self-report on different aspects of their mental health. We also asked participants to engage in a battery of memory tasks that tested their short and long term episodic, semantic, and spatial memory performance. We found that participants with similar physical activity habits and fitness profiles tended to also exhibit similar mental health and task performance profiles. These effects were task-specific in that different physical activity patterns or fitness characteristics varied with different aspects of memory, on different tasks. Taken together, these findings provide foundational work for designing physical more »
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10369674
- Journal Name:
- Scientific Reports
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2045-2322
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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