Emily Scott

Northern Vermont University · Psychology

There is abundant evidence for both cognitive and affective improvements stemming from spending time in nature; however, the mechanism underlying these effects are still under debate. Frameworks such as Attention Restoration Theory (ART; Kaplan 1995) and Stress Recovery Theory (SRT; Ulrich et al. 1991) have been helpful in understanding how restora...

Stress Recovery Theory (SRT) suggests that time spent in nature reduces stress. While many studies have examined changes in stress physiology after exposure to nature imagery, nature virtual reality, or nature walks, this study is the first to examine changes in heart rate (HR) and vagally mediated HR variability, as assessed by Respiratory Sinus A...

According to Kaplan's Theory of Attention Restoration (ART), spending time in a natural environment can restore depleted cognitive resources. If this is true, then nature exposure may modulate the error-related negativity (ERN), a component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) that is related to cognitive control and attentional allocation. A...

Exposure to environments that contain natural features can benefit mood, cognition, and physiological responses. Previous research proposed exposure to nature restores voluntary attention-attention that is directed towards a task through top down control. Voluntary attention is limited in capacity and depletes with use. Nature provides unique stimu...

Objective: Despite the well-established association between SRH and health, little is known about the potential psychobiological mechanisms responsible for such links, and if these associations differ by age. The main goals of this study were to investigate the links between SRH and ambulatory blood pressure (ABP), if age moderated the risk, and t...

Objective: Despite its simplicity, single-item measures of self-rated health have been associated with mortality independent of objective health conditions. However, little is known about the mechanisms potentially responsible for such associations. This study tested the association between self-rated heath and inflammatory markers as biological p...

Background Subjective sleep quality is a predictor of important health outcomes, but little work has examined the social context of sleep that might inform theoretical models and intervention approaches. The present study tested actor-partner models of sleep quality and its links to inflammatory markers. Method Participants were 84 middle-age to o...

Genetic testing of minors is advised only for conditions in which benefits of early intervention outweigh potential psychological harms. This study investigated whether genetic counseling and test reporting for the CDKN2A/p16 mutation, which confers highly elevated melanoma risk, improved sun protection without inducing distress. Eighteen minors (M...

Previous research shows that exposure to natural environments can decrease stress and improve performance on tasks measuring attention. We used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure changes in neural activity before, during, and after prolonged exposure to nature. We found midline frontal theta (4-8hz) activity significantly decreased after expos...