Department of Psychology, University of Southern Denmark, 5230, Odense, Denmark.
Department of Physical Education and Sport, University of Valencia, 46010, Valencia, Spain.
BMC Psychol. 2022 Apr 27;10(1):108. doi: 10.1186/s40359-022-00810-y.
Occupational stress has huge financial as well as human costs. Application of crowdsourcing might be a way to strengthen the investigation of occupational mental health. Therefore, the aim of the study was to assess Danish employees' stress and cognition by relying on a crowdsourcing approach, as well as investigating the effect of a 30-day mindfulness and music intervention.
We translated well-validated neuropsychological laboratory- and task-based paradigms into an app-based platform using cognitive games measuring sustained attention and working memory and measuring stress via. Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale. A total of 623 healthy volunteers from Danish companies participated in the study and were randomized into three groups, which consisted of a 30-day intervention of either mindfulness or music, or a non-intervention control group.
Participants in the mindfulness group showed a significant improvement in the coefficient of sustained attention, working memory capacity and perceived stress (p < .001). The music group showed a 38% decrease of self-perceived stress. The control group showed no difference from pre to post in the survey or cognitive outcome measures. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between usage of the mindfulness and music app and elevated score on both the cognitive games and the perceived stress scale.
The study supports the nascent field of crowdsourcing by being able to replicate data collected in previous well-controlled laboratory studies from a range of experimental cognitive tasks, making it an effective alternative. It also supports mindfulness as an effective intervention in improving mental health in the workplace.
职业压力造成了巨大的经济和人力成本。众包的应用可能是加强职业心理健康调查的一种方法。因此，本研究的目的是通过众包方法评估丹麦员工的压力和认知，并调查为期 30 天的正念和音乐干预的效果。
我们使用认知游戏将经过充分验证的神经心理学实验室和基于任务的范式转化为基于应用程序的平台，这些游戏可测量持续性注意力和工作记忆，并通过 Cohen 的感知压力量表来测量压力。共有 623 名来自丹麦公司的健康志愿者参与了这项研究，并被随机分为三组，分别进行为期 30 天的正念、音乐或非干预对照组干预。
正念组的参与者在持续性注意力、工作记忆能力和感知压力方面的得分显著提高（p<0.001）。音乐组自我感知压力降低了 38%。对照组在调查或认知结果测量方面，前后没有差异。此外，正念和音乐应用程序的使用与认知游戏和感知压力量表的得分升高之间存在显著相关性。
该研究通过能够复制之前从一系列实验认知任务中收集的经过充分控制的实验室研究数据，支持了众包的新兴领域，这是一种有效的替代方法。它还支持正念作为改善工作场所心理健康的有效干预措施。
