This paper explores the impact of rest duration on recovery from cognitively demanding tasks, focusing on pen input features as an indicator of load and recovery. We designed a user experiment involving a cognitively loading task with three levels of difficulty, followed by a controlled rest period, and then a fixed difficulty task. The participants answered the tasks by writing alphabet letters on a tablet monitor. Subjective ratings validated the increasing difficulty of the first task (Friedman ANOVA pp<p<0.05), and also indicated that the rest duration had a significant impact on the perceived difficulty of the subsequent task (p=0.048). In terms of pen features, the height of the written characters decreased significantly when the rest duration was reduced (ANOVA p<p<0.05), and the pen pressure decreased significantly as the task difficult increased (p=0.009). These encouraging results suggest the addition of a crucial time factor in the cognitive load theory, and benefits to HCI practitioners through better control of content and information pace.
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