Source: OHSAlert - Subscription Service (24.03.2026)
A 10-minute walking break for tired workers can "rebuild situational awareness" and prevent critical errors, an experimental study has discovered.
The experiment with 50 individuals operating an air traffic control (ATC) simulator shows that microbreaks are effective short-term fatigue countermeasures that help maintain operational safety, the researchers, from Japan's University of Tsukuba, say.
The participants performed sessions on the simulator with either: no breaks; meditation microbreaks (where they were instructed to sit in a chair, close their eyes and focus on their breathing); or walking microbreaks (where they were instructed to walk in an indoor corridor with views of the outdoors).
The microbreaks provided participants with only modest relief from their tiredness, showing that recovery from fatigue accumulated during cognitively demanding tasks needs longer or more intensive intervention.
However, participants who received microbreaks were able to maintain performance levels above those who didn't, with the reaction times of the latter increasing significantly over the course of the experiment.
Interestingly, the meditation microbreaks effectively prevented reaction time increases, but did not improve error rates, the researchers say.
"In contrast, walking microbreaks demonstrated broader benefits, preventing an increase in reaction duration while significantly reducing critical error rates," they say.
"Light physical activity during walking may be more effective than sedentary meditation in helping operators rebuild situational awareness and sustain attention during complex ATC tasks."
Air traffic controllers perform demanding work requiring "sustained attention, highly precise decision-making, and rapid reactions in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment", the researchers note.
Controller errors contribute to 22 per cent of aviation incidents, and 13 per cent of incident reports cite fatigue-related factors, they say.
Meanwhile, half of all air traffic controllers report feeling fatigued after work as a result of exposure to shift work, heavy workloads and stress.
"A large body of empirical studies shows that methods such as sleep and napping, regular rest breaks, microbreaks, and exercise or relaxation interventions are widely considered effective for alleviating work-related fatigue and improving cognitive performance," the researchers say.
Different modes of microbreaks have also been shown to alleviate physical fatigue and reduce stress and anxiety, such as meditation, listening to music, walking, exercising, reading and watching television, they say.
They say their findings show that a 10-minute break is not enough "to fully eliminate accumulated physiological workload", but "significantly alleviates subjective fatigue and helps maintain task performance, particularly in preventing critical errors".