Task, Seat Adjustability, and Postural Change

Modern ergonomic chairs provide a variety of adjustment capabilities. Chairs may afford a posture in which the operator is tilted forward, or leaning backward. Recent studies suggest that the former posture is optimal for copy intensive work while the latter is optimal for screen intensive work. However, clear instruction to operators regarding these relationship is important. At the same time, some chair mechanisms allow postural adjustments to be fixed at a variety of orientations, while others “float” with the movement of the operator. Findings of the current study replicate earlier work with fixed mechanisms, while indicating that postural adjustments with dynamic chairs will critically depend on contextual factors such as adjustability of seat height.