Comfortable Temperature Boosts Working Memory

People who feel too hot or too cold at their workplace are likely unable to use their working memory to its highest potential, researchers suggest in a recent study.

A study published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Psychological Research details how temperature not only affect your mood, but also your cognitive abilities.

To determine this, researchers from  the Leiden University in the Netherlands placed a number of research participants in one of two groups. Individuals who said that they prefer being in warm temperatures were placed in one group, while participants who preferred working in cool environments were placed  in another.

These two groups were then asked to perform  a basic task in three different temperatures. -- 77, 68, and 59 degrees Fahrenheit.

In the task, participants were made to view different letters on a computer screen that flashed by one-after-another. According to the study, the participants were asked to signal each time a letter appeared that was the same as the letter shown two letters previously. This type of task was designed to measure the efficiency of each participant's working memory -- the type of memory people use in their daily routines to perform simple tasks such as giving directions or picking up where a conversation was left off prior to some sort of interruption.

According to the results of this experiment, participants showed markedly better working memory scores in environments that were closest to their preferred temperatures.

"The results confirm the idea that temperature influences cognitive ability. Working in one's ideal temperature can promote efficiency and productivity," the authors of the study concluded.

However, while the study does established an associative relationship, it does nothing to explain cause-and-effect. While we can see that temperature influences how well we use our brains, an explanation as to why this occurs does not have to be terribly scientific.

Discomfort, for instance, is a very distracting thing, and distractions of course inhibit and interrupt running thought processes, making it much more difficult to concentrate.

Still, even without a concrete reason as to why this phenominon occurs, the researchers argue that the results of the study have "important straightforward, practical implications for the design of workplaces."

The study was published in the March issue of Psychological Research.