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

Playing games has been shown to be an effective method of postwork 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.