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Understanding Nature and Its Cognitive Benefits
Abstract
Many people have the intuition that interacting with natural environments benefits their psychological health. But what has research actually demonstrated about the benefits of nature experience and the potential mechanisms underlying those benefits? This article describes empirical research on the cognitive benefits of interacting with natural environments and several theories that have been proposed to explain these effects. We also propose future directions that may be useful in exploring the extent of nature’s effects on cognitive performance and some potential mediating factors. Specifically, exposure to a variety of natural stimuli (vs. urban stimuli) consistently improves working memory performance. One potential mechanism for this is the perception of low-level features of natural environments, such as edge density in the visual domain. Although low-level features have been shown to carry semantic information and influence behavior, additional studies are needed to indicate whether perceiving these features in isolation is necessary or sufficient for obtaining the cognitive benefits of interacting with nature.
... In fact, substantial research evidence indicates that contact with the natural environment can bring a range of benefits to human psychological health (Astell-Burt & Feng, 2019;Bratman et al., 2021;Herchet et al., 2022;Klein et al., 2022;Latip et al., 2023). These positive effects include relieving stress and negative emotions, improving attentional capacity, enhancing immune system functions, and increasing subjective life satisfaction (Bratman et al., 2021;Herchet et al., 2022;Jones et al., 2021;Schertz & Berman, 2019). These benefits arise from various forms of nature experience like outdoor activities, viewing natural scenery, immersion in natural settings, and listening to natural sounds (Herchet et al., 2022;Jones et al., 2021). ...
... Specifically in psychological aspects, interacting with nature has been shown to improve cognitive abilities like working memory, attentional control, and cognitive flexibility, as well as alleviating depression, anxiety, and increasing life satisfaction (Astell-Burt & Feng, 2019;Bratman et al., 2021;Klein et al., 2022;Schertz & Berman, 2019). ...
With rapid urbanization, the increasing separation between humans and the natural environment is exacerbating mental health challenges. Research shows that contact with the natural environment yields significant psychological benefits. However, existing theories have limitations in sample diversity and explanatory power. This study reviewed and tested five major theoretical frameworks, aiming to develop a new interdisciplinary theoretical framework. Using a questionnaire, data from 413 participants were analyzed via structural equation modeling. The results confirmed the important roles of physiological and cognitive effects, and psychological needs satisfaction, in how the natural environment influences mental health. This research created a progressive theoretical framework that integrates these findings, enhancing understanding of the complex mechanisms by which nature affects mental health and informing urban planning. Future research, based on this framework and involving larger samples, will aim to develop a more comprehensive theoretical system.
... The impact of nature on people has been widely investigated, yielding correlational and experimental evidence that spending time in nature is associated with numerous positive psychological outcomes, including increased attention, positive affect, and reduced stress (Bratman et al., 2019;Hartig et al., 2014;Schertz & Berman, 2019). Most of these studies have focused on the benefits of nature for individuals, but time in nature may also benefit relations between people, in particular subjective feelings of social connection. ...
... Most studies evaluating the impact of nature on human health and wellbeing have focused on the benefits of nature for individuals, such as improvements to attention and affect (Bratman et al., 2019;Hartig et al., 2014;Schertz & Berman, 2019). Few studies have investigated whether spending time in nature benefits relations between people, and studies that have done so have primarily used correlational designs (de Vries et al., 2013;Oh et al., 2022;Weinstein et al., 2015;Zelenski & Nisbet, 2014 ). ...
... Indeed, negative perceptions towards animals are often accompanied by false myths and superstitions [40], as well as other cultural elements [39,40]. Conversely, a better understanding of environmental issues is associated with more positive attitudes [41]. ...
... Observation is the fundamental basis of all research, and young people must spend time observing the world around them, asking questions, and reflecting on the how and why of the fascinating processes that nature offers us; in addition, the observation of and contact with nature help increase cognitive flexibility [41]. ...
The global decline in the number of pollinators has elicited considerable public attention. To the general public, honeybees are considered to be the primary pollinators. Also, a decline in managed honeybee stocks is alarming and could lead to declining pollination services and reduced ecosystem biodiversity, although the Apis mellifera is the least likely pollinator species on the planet to be at risk of extinction. A less-than-complete understanding of honeybees and their ecology may hinder their conservation. Ascertaining the public’s level of knowledge about, and perception of, a problem can help in solving it. This research focused mainly on honeybees because people are unlikely to be able to recognize the different species of Apoidea. Schools are ideal places for understanding the basic knowledge and attitudes regarding this insect. We aimed to understand the perception and knowledge of 12–14-year-old children towards honeybees as well as to verify the existence of a correlation between knowledge level and positive perception. Secondary school students can play a key role in the conservation of biodiversity as they are carriers of knowledge in families and will be future citizens. To this end, 231 students were given a 26-item questionnaire related to their perception and knowledge of honeybees. Results indicate that the students have a good understanding of the role that bees play in nature but do not have a completely clear idea of this insect’s interactions with the environment. Results also show that the children feel a certain fear of honeybees, although they respect them. The average score of the ecological branch test exceeded the average score of the perceptual one, indicating that the subjects had a more positive education than perception.
... The benefits of being outside and in nature are innumerable. From increased attention, 18 enhanced cognitive development, 19 reduced stress, 20 and overall improvement to personal well-being. 21 Positive effects from interacting with nature can be experienced in approximately 120 minutes per week 22 or as little as five minutes a day exercising in a green space, 23 indicating a simple and cost-effective public health prescription. ...
... Perhaps the integrative, experiential, and reflective nature of the course and assignments provided students with the necessary respite and healing often associated with nature-based healing strategies. [18][19][20][21] Lessons learned from one of the author's (initials removed for review process) generative experience of offering the course to all five cohort classes over the past three years have led to the following ideas for further development. First, Activity suggestions (n = 10) I would perhaps like to have more discussion of the readings that were assigned to us during class Have more structured time for socializing, so we can connect with each other I think making us journal would be nice An event in which we pot our own houseplant More intense hikes would have been fun I did not enjoy the fire ceremony Timeliness (n = 3) I loved the course. ...
Background
There is a growing, global awareness and recognition of the important, interdependent relationships between our natural world and human health. Several contemporary health organizations have placed calls to action and emphasize an urgent need for collaboration and interdisciplinary research, education, and clinical work to address the increasing degradation of our planetary and human health. With more research dedicated to nature’s health impacts, health professions schools would benefit by including such training in their programs while also cultivating a comprehensive mind-body health perspective to support both the health of student practitioners and their future patients.
Objective
The present program evaluation investigates a five-day outdoor mini-course covering nature-based health techniques at a medical and dental school in the American Northeast. This unique outdoor course combines nature, creativity, and reflection within the context of modern medicine.
Methods
A concurrent mixed-method design using descriptive statistics, quantitative and qualitative data from students’ anonymous final course evaluations and final reflection projects are evaluated.
Results
Data suggests that students benefitted from their experience during this five-day course. Students provided feedback reinforcing the enjoyment and transformative outcomes gleaned from the course experiences. Students entered the course describing feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and overextended, not uncommon for learners in medical and dental school, and completed the course describing the acquisition of applicable skills, increased attention and mindfulness, creativity, and connection to the natural world.
Conclusions
Students described a positive experience of the course. Several areas of personal and professional development were also described, such as improvements within cognitive domains, enhanced connection with nature, others, and themselves, increased mindfulness, and overall improved well-being. Findings have implications for medical and dental programs on how such innovative training may lean into the work of nature-based care to provide for the whole person.
... Therefore, in a natural environment, like a park, directed attention can be restored after intense cognition (Kaplan, 1995;Kaplan & Berman, 2010), for example, demanding school activities, so that performance in cognitive tasks increases after a green break during a school day (Mason et al., 2022c). In contrast, research has indicated that urban environments deplete mental and attentional resources (Schertz & Berman, 2019;Stevenson et al., 2019). Yet, attention is a fundamental function required in learning activities. ...
... According to ART, nature attracts involuntary attention and at the same time allows directed or voluntary attention to rest. In contrast, an urban busy environment is stressful and taxes voluntary attention as multiple stimuli should be paid attention to (Schertz & Berman, 2019). ...
Natural environments are beneficial for cognitive functioning and affect. Appraisals of such benefits can lead to the development of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in the long run. This study aimed to investigate the effects of an indirect exposure to a natural and urban environment during a short break in a school day, using a ‘green’ video depicting a walk through a lush forest and comparing it to an urban video portraying a walk through a busy city. We involved 91 fourth and fifth graders in a within-participants design. Results show that students decreased their performance in an arithmetic calculation task after watching the urban video, while no significant differences were observed before and after the exposure to the green environment. Students also reported experiencing more negative affect in relation to the exposure to the urban than the natural environment. Moreover, the students perceived the natural environment as more restorative than the urban environment. Taken together, our findings suggest that exposure to urban environments, in contrast to natural environments, may have negative effects on cognitive and affective functioning during school breaks. Educational implications suggest that when it is not possible to stay in a natural environment around the school, or there is no access to nature due to distance, videos of natural environments can be used during short breaks. They have potential to cognitively and affectively benefit students’ who may often be exposed to environmental stressors.
... For example, Shinrin-Yoku or Forest Bathing is proposed as a candidate for improving recovery rates from addictions, by alleviating mental distress such as anxiety, stress and depression which are usually seen as risk factors associated with many types of addictions (Kotera & Rhodes, 2020). Indeed, a variety of nature contacts have been proved to restore individuals' mental distress and enhance their wellbeing (for reviews, see: Corazon et al., 2019;Schertz & Berman, 2019). Recent work also provided evidence that exposure to natural scenes could promote individuals' tendency to delay gratification, preferring larger delayed gains to smaller immediate gains when making inter-temporal choices (Berry et al., 2020;Kao et al., 2019;van der Wal et al., 2013). ...
... According to Attention Restoration Theory, natural environments are restorative, for the characteristics of nature can attract individuals' involuntary attention automatically and enable the fatigued voluntary attention to refresh (Kaplan, 1995). Empirical evidence also showed that exposure to nature are beneficial for restoring individuals' cognitive capacity (for a meta-analysis, see: Schertz & Berman, 2019). Besides, proximity to nature can promote positive affect and alleviate negative affect (for meta-analyses, see: Bratman et al., 2021;McMahan & Estes, 2015), and many people tend to utilize natural environments to regulate negative emotions (Bakir-Demir et al., 2021;Johnsen & Rydstedt, 2013;Korpela & Ylén, 2007). ...
Across four studies (Ns = 1448, 159, 175, 355), we tested the hypothesis that proximity to nature can predict and prevent problematic smartphone use, being mediated by mindfulness. In correlational Study 1, we investigated a sample of Chinese undergraduate students and found that nature connectedness (sense of proximity to nature) was a significant predictor of less problematic smartphone use. In experimental Studies 2 and 3, we manipulated participants’ proximity to nature by having them recall experiences in natural (vs. urban) settings or exposing them to real natural (vs. urban) environments, and observed that participants in natural (vs. urban) conditions reported lower desire of using smartphone. Adopting an online Noticing Nature Intervention (nature condition), Study 4 showed that participants who noticing nature for two weeks reported less problematic smartphone use, relative to their peers in control conditions. Furthermore, we found that mindfulness played a significant mediating role in the correlational (Study 1) and causal (Study 3) link between proximity to nature and problematic smartphone use (desire). Overall, the present work highlights the role of nature in helping tackle the issue of problematic smartphone use as well as the underlying mechanism (i.e., mindfulness).
... Previous studies indicate that immersion and being in contact with natural environments positively affect health and well-being (Schertz & Berman, 2019;White et al., 2019). Results indicate that being exposed to nature promotes beneficial effects, including improved attention and cognitive functions (Faber Taylor & Kuo, 2009;Mason et al., 2021;Taylor et al., 2001), lower stress (De Bloom et al., 2017;Korpela & Kinnunen, 2011), better mood (Bratman et al., 2015), and even reduced risk of psychiatric disorders (McCay et al., 2019, p. 32). ...
... According to the attentional gate model (designed to explain prospective time judgments; Zakay & Block, 1995), if attention is not fully oriented to time, fewer pulses reach the accumulator, producing a subjective feeling that less time has passed (temporal underestimation). Natural settings promote mindfulness and increase a state of relaxation (Howell et al., 2011;Macaulay et al., 2022), a sense of calm within the person (Korpela & Kinnunen, 2011), decreased stress levels (Daniels et al., 2022;Sudimac et al., 2022), and restored attention (Bratman et al., 2015;Capaldi et al., 2015;Schertz & Berman, 2019). Conversely, urban environments increase physiological arousal and exogenous attention (Laumann et al., 2003). ...
... As noted earlier, there has been an increase in mental health concerns among people in the developed world (Bauer, 2012;Kasser et al., 2014;Moldes and Ku, 2020;Pieters, 2013). This is especially true for people living in urban centres (Louv, 2006;Schertz & Berman, 2019;Wells and Evans, 2003). As such, our place of discontent is likely experienced first in our minds (Konjedi and Maleeh, 2017). ...
... In day-to-day living in urban areas, people are bombarded by constant stimuli, from their smartphones to navigating traffic, crowded subways and advertisements, to name just a few (Appel et al., 2019;Azumah et al., 2021;Thompson et al., 2022;Schertz & Berman, 2019). It has been shown that it takes concerted cognitive effort to drown out this constant noise and distraction (Jafari et al., 2019). ...
This research aims to explore the role of nature therapy guides in successfully leading nature-based experiences and, through that effort, allowing their clients to achieve their mental health and well-being goals. Understanding the role a nature therapy guide plays can, in turn, aid policymakers, individuals and communities in promoting positive mental health and well-being outcomes, supporting conservation efforts, and improving access to nature experiences. Here a nature therapy guide is defined as a trained professional who helps individuals or groups connect with nature to promote mental health and well-being. Nature therapy guides may have a variety of backgrounds, including naturalists, ecologists, psychologists, or healthcare professionals, with most of which completing some form of nature therapy qualification. Nature therapy guides may work in a variety of settings, such as parks, forests, beaches, or gardens, and may tailor their approach to different populations, such as children, adults, or seniors. They may also incorporate elements of ecotherapy, which emphasises the connection between human well-being and the health of the natural environment. To this end, this research answers two interrelated research questions. Firstly what motivations have guides found that bring the general public (i.e., clients) to them and, in turn,
... 2 Numerous studies have emphasized the correlations between exposure to natural environments and cognitive benefits, physical health, and well-being. [108][109][110][111] One potential mechanism for the benefit of spending time in nature is the perception of low-level features of natural environments. 109 More precisely, the visual domain's edge density has been demonstrated to convey semantic information and influence executive functions (EFs, i.e., cognitive inhibition, attention, memory, planning, cognitive flexibility, etc.; for a review, see 112 ). ...
... [108][109][110][111] One potential mechanism for the benefit of spending time in nature is the perception of low-level features of natural environments. 109 More precisely, the visual domain's edge density has been demonstrated to convey semantic information and influence executive functions (EFs, i.e., cognitive inhibition, attention, memory, planning, cognitive flexibility, etc.; for a review, see 112 ). According to White et al., 110 their study indicated that a minimum of 120 minutes per week spent in natural environments might serve as a crucial threshold for promoting health and well-being among a diverse group of adults residing in England. ...
Can we better understand the unique mechanisms of de novo abilities in light of our current knowledge of the psychological and neuroscientific literature on creativity? This review outlines the state‐of‐the‐art in the neuroscience of creativity and points out crucial aspects that still demand further exploration, such as brain plasticity. The progressive development of current neuroscience research on creativity presents a multitude of prospects and potentials for furnishing efficacious therapy in the context of health and illness. Therefore, we discuss directions for future studies, identifying a focus on pinpointing the neglected beneficial practices for creative therapy. We emphasize the neglected neuroscience perspective of creativity on health and disease and how creative therapy could offer limitless possibilities to improve our well‐being and give hope to patients with neurodegenerative diseases to compensate for their brain injuries and cognitive impairments by expressing their hidden creativity.
... We utilized a method involving the analysis of wisdomrelated themes in participants' open-ended reflections (see Grossmann et al., 2010Grossmann et al., , pp. 2013, 2019) on workplace conflicts (Stavropoulos et al., 2023). Third, given that nature has been found to have cognitive benefits (Berman et al., 2008;Schertz & Berman, 2019), it might also promote wise reasoning. Accordingly, in Study 2, we isolated the effects of awe from mere exposure to nature by comparing nature awe and nature-neutral conditions. ...
Awe, a self-transcendent emotion, has been theoretically posited as a precursor to wise reasoning. However, direct empirical evidence supporting this relationship and the underlying mechanism has been limited. In four studies (N = 3700), we examined the relationship between awe and wise reasoning, as well as the mediating effect of self-transcendence, employing cross-sectional, longitudinal , and experimental designs. We consistently found that awe had a lagged effect on (Study 1), enhanced (Studies 2 & 3), and was associated with (Study 4) wise reasoning. Furthermore, self-transcendence mediated this relationship (Studies 3 & 4). The impact of awe on wise reasoning and mediating effect of self-transcendence could not solely be attributed to awe's predominantly positive nature, and the mediation model was established beyond the influence of self-smallness (Studies 3-4). These findings contribute to understanding the emotional trigger of wise reasoning, the cognitive implications of awe, and its role in promoting wise conflict resolution.
... Η δεύτερη κατηγορία πλεονεκτημάτων του υπαίθριου παιχνιδιού και της επαφής με τη φύση έχει να κάνει με αρχές παιδαγωγικής και με τρόπους μέσα από τους οποίους τα παιδιά μαθαίνουν, κατανοούν και ανακαλύπτουν τον κόσμο γύρω τους. Μέσα από το υπαίθριο παιχνίδι τα παιδιά παρατηρούν, πειραματίζονται, αναπτύσσουν δεξιότητες επίλυσης προβλημάτων, θέτουν ερωτήματα και προβληματισμούς, δοκιμάζουν και πολλές φορές παίρνουν ρίσκο (Schertz & Berman 2019). Η πολυαισθητηριακή μάθηση υποστηρίζεται αφού όλες οι αισθήσεις ενεργοποιούνται και συλλειτουργούν ώστε να προκαλέσουν και να φιλτράρουν ερεθίσματα του έξω κόσμου. ...
Τα τελευταία χρόνια και ειδικά μετά την πανδημία, πολλοί ερευνητές και επαγγελματίες υπογραμμίζουν τη σημασία του υπαίθριου παιχνιδιού στην ολιστική ανάπτυξη και ευημερία των παιδιών. Ο πλούσιος πολυαισθητηριακός χαρακτήρας της βιωματικής μάθησης σε εξωτερικά ή υπαίθρια περιβάλλοντα παρέχει πολύτιμες δυνατότητες μέσα από τις οποίες τα μικρά παιδιά μπορούν να εξερευνήσουν πτυχές του εαυτού τους, των άλλων και του κόσμου γύρω τους. Στην παρούσα εισήγηση θα γίνει αναφορά στα οφέλη του υπαίθριου παιχνιδιού, στην παιδαγωγική του αξία, στον ρόλο των συμμετεχόντων και στα χαρακτηριστικά του υπαίθριου χώρου. Ιδιαίτερη αναφορά θα γίνει στο ρίσκο ως απαραίτητο συστατικό του ‘είναι και του γίγνεσαι’ και στο πώς το υπαίθριο παιχνίδι, και όχι μόνο, μπορεί να αποτελέσει ένα ασφαλές πεδίο μέσα στο οποίο τα παιδιά μπορούν να δοκιμάσουν τις δυνατότητές τους, να τολμήσουν και να ξεπεράσουν τα όριά τους. Πρόκειται για εμπειρίες που συντελούν στη διαμόρφωση προσωπικοτήτων με αίσθημα ευθύνης, αυτονομίας, αυτο-εκτίμησης και συνειδητοποίησης.
... Green spaces serve as vital refuges from the built environment, enhancing psychological well-being by fostering a connection to nature [34,35]. The biophilia hypothesis, introduced by Wilson [36] and expanded by Kellert and Wilson [37], posits an inherent human affinity for nature, supporting the integration of natural elements in urban settings to improve mental health [38,39]. During the pandemic, access to green spaces helped alleviate adverse psychological effects of lockdowns, such as anxiety and depression, highlighting their importance for urban resilience [40]. ...
This study examines the critical role of elevated urban spaces in fostering urban resilience and enhancing public well-being in the post-pandemic era. Through a detailed literature review and contextual analysis, the research explores how these spaces address the evolving needs for social interaction, public health, and mental wellness in urban design. Focusing on London, with comparisons to international examples such as Singapore, the study presents findings from sixty-six semi-structured walk-along interviews conducted at the Sky Garden and Crossrail Place Roof Garden. Data analysis reveals both the challenges and guiding principles for designing resilient elevated urban spaces. Key areas for improvement include accessibility, circulation, aesthetic integration, and management strategies. The findings emphasise the value of these green spaces in densely populated cities, as they provide vital recreational areas that support the mental and physical health of residents. This research offers a structured framework for embedding elevated green spaces into high-density urban environments, enhancing both resilience and liveability. The study delivers actionable insights for urban planners and policymakers, outlining a nuanced approach to designing sustainable, adaptable green spaces.
... 9 Conceptually, this also aligns with emerging work around the power of "awe" and the cognitive benefits of being in nature. 10,11 In particular, feelings of awe can be associated with increased feelings of humility and empathy, setting the foundation for increased tolerance and creativity. 11,12 We also considered how to recreate a salon-style social environment to foster egalitarian ideals. ...
... A possible explanation is that exposure to natural environments during outdoor play has been linked to improvements in attention, memory, problem-solving skills, sensory stimulation, spatial awareness, social interaction, and hands-on learning experiences across a variety of activities, all essential for cognitive development (64-68). Moreover, outdoor play is known to provide psychological benefits such as stress reduction and mood improvement, which in turn enhance executive function compared to indoor play (68,69). Further research is warranted to explore the associations of organized PA/sports and outdoor active play with cognitive outcomes. ...
Background
Physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior (SB), and sleep are collectively referred to as 24-h movement behaviors, which may be linked to cognitive development in children. However, most of the evidence was based on cross-sectional studies and/or solely relied on parent-reported information on children’s behaviors, and it remains uncertain whether all domains/contexts of PA and SB are similarly associated with executive function and academic achievement.
Objective
We investigated the prospective associations of accelerometer-measured 24 h-movement behaviors and domain-specific PA and SB with executive function and academic achievement among school-aged children in Singapore.
Methods
The Growing Up in Singapore Toward healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) cohort used a wrist-worn accelerometer (Actigraph-GT3x+) to measure 24 h-movement behaviors data at ages 5.5 and 8 years. Executive function and academic achievement were assessed using NEuroPSYchology (NEPSY) and Wechsler Individual Achievement Tests at ages 8.5 and 9-years, respectively. Compositional data analyses were conducted to explore the associations of 24 h-movement behavior with outcomes, and multiple linear regression models to examine the associations of domain-specific PA and SB with outcomes (n = 432).
Results
Among 432 children whose parents agreed to cognitive assessments (47% girls and 58% Chinese), the composition of 24 h-movement behaviors at ages 5.5 and 8 years was not associated with executive function and academic achievement. However, higher moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) relative to remaining movement behaviors at age 5.5 years was associated with lower academic achievement [Mean difference (95% confidence interval): −0.367 (−0.726, −0.009) z-score], and reallocating MVPA time to sleep showed higher academic achievement scores [30 min from MVPA to sleep: 0.214 (0.023, 0.404) z-score]. Certain domains of PA and SB, notably organized PA/sports, outdoor play, and reading books were favorably associated with outcomes of interest, while indoor play and screen-viewing were unfavorably associated.
Conclusion
The associations between movement behaviors and cognitive outcomes are multifaceted, influenced by specific domains of PA and SB. This study underscores the importance of participation in organized PA/sports, outdoor active play, and reading books, while ensuring adequate sleep and limiting screen viewing, to enhance cognitive outcomes. These findings underscore the need for further research into time-use trade-offs. Such studies could have major implications for revising current guidelines or strategies aimed at promoting healthier 24 h-movement behaviors in children.
Study registration
https://clinicaltrials.gov/, NCT01174875.
... • Contact with nature at school, promoting cognitive ability and enhancing working memory [21]. • Exposure to natural stimuli, as opposed to urban stimuli, improving working memory [22]. ...
This article describes the place relationships adolescents have with natural elements in recently developed ‘vertical schools’ in Australia: a relatively new school typology in the country, generally considered to be over four storeys high. Vertical schools are being built in Australia’s largest cities in response to the need for new schools where land is scarce. Drawing on qualitative research into the place relationships that adolescents have with their learning environments in two Australian vertical schools, this article explores the ways young people seek closer associations with nature in multi-storey educational settings. The research adopted a phenomenological approach to ‘place research’, asking what makes a place a place? Further, it recognised that places have the capacity to shape the ‘becoming’ of a person, that ‘becoming’ happens when there is a certain resonance between a place’s cycles, and that identity is created out of difference. As such, ‘place as complex adaptive assemblage theory’ was employed to study the interplay between location and experience in selected vertical schools, also drawing on the earlier theoretical work of Relph (1976), who suggested that the essence of a place lies in the unselfconscious intentionality that defines places as profound centres of human existence. Photovoice was employed as a method to elicit insights into the relationships adolescents have with their school as place. Students created photo essays to document their place relationships, revealing deeply insightful personal reflections on their school as place and the meanings they associate with it. Specifically, the article reports on what thirteen adolescent students communicated about the biophilic experiences afforded by their vertical school, including how it influenced their ‘becoming’. The findings demonstrated that the participating students not only valued relationships with natural elements, but actively sought biophilic experiences on a regular basis. The desire for more frequent and more significant interactions with natural materials and cycles was common across most students, indicating that the relatively limited biophilic experiences available to students in vertical schools is a challenge that should be addressed in future multi-level educational environments.
... Algunos estudios de carácter correlacional y experimental entre la exposición a la naturaleza y los estados de ánimo, entre otros factores, vienen demostrando que interactuar con la naturaleza tiene beneficios cognitivos. Una revisión realizada en la Universidad de Chicago concluyó que los espacios verdes cerca de las escuelas promueven el desarrollo cognitivo en la infancia y las vistas verdes cerca de los hogares de los adolescentes promueven comportamientos de autocontrol 18 . Este aspecto es de vital importancia para el desarrollo de las capacidades académicas y el adecuado crecimiento social y económico de un país. ...
Introducción: La exposición de personas a espacios naturales se relaciona con una serie de beneficios a la salud física, mental, emocional y social, que incluyen mayor atención, disminución del estrés, mejor estado de ánimo, menor riesgo de trastornos mentales e incluso incremento de la empatía y la cooperación; sin embargo, los entornos promueven menos el contacto con el mundo natural. A pesar de los resultados demostrado en los estudios, los preadolescentes y adolescentes de hoy pasan menos tiempo al aire libre que nunca antes. Así lo confirma un estudio realizado el año 2018 por el National Trust en el Reino Unido según el cual los preadolescentes y adolescentes pasaban apenas unas cuatro horas a la semana al aire libre, ósea aproximadamente un 50 % menos de la experiencia de sus padres cuando tuvieron su edad. Cuando no salen al aire libre se pierden valiosas experiencias que podrían enriquecer su desarrollo físico, cognitivo y mental. Objetivo: Evaluar el estado de ánimo tras la inmersión en la naturaleza (Vitamina N) a través de la una caminata guiada de terapia de bosque ANFT-Vitamina N con estudiantes de la institución educativa pública José María Obando y el colegio San Jerónimo en la Reserva Natural (OMEC) La Ilusión. Metodología: La población de estudio estuvo compuesta por 40 estudiantes del sistema de educación pública de El Rosal, Cundinamarca y 18 de un colegio privado de El Rosal en Cundinamarca. La intervención consistió en una sola visita de los participantes hasta completar o superar el número n calculado para este estudio en un período de 8 meses. Los instrumentos de evaluación fueron dos: la Escala de Valoración del Estado de Ánimo (EVEA), la cual se respondió al inicio y al final de la intervención y un cuestionario adicional sobre percepción y significado de la naturaleza Los participantes tuvieron una experiencia denominada Caminata Guiada de Terapia de Bosque de ANFT con una duración aproximada de dos (2) horas en grupos de un máximo de 20 personas. Conclusiones: Los resultados obtenidos en este estudio sugieren que el acceso de los preadolescentes y adolescentes a la naturaleza ofrece oportunidades para la restauración, para mejorar su percepción de bienestar y para impulsar una relación más empática con el ambiente. Aunque los hallazgos recopilados se pueden considerar paralelos a los resultados de los adultos, la singularidad de las experiencias restaurativas del estado de ánimo en esta población, además de todos sus grandes impactos en salud física, mental, emocional y social debe considerarse para explorarse en investigaciones longitudinales que permitan seguir creciendo la evidencia científica del efecto de la inmersión consciente en la naturaleza sobre los preadolescentes y adolescentes.
... A growing body of evidence suggests spending more time in nature improves mental health and cognitive functioning (Bratman et al. 2019;Schertz and Berman 2019). These findings suggest that groups with greater resources and structural advantages likely enjoyed health benefits from their coping strategies. ...
... Children and adolescents are spending more time indoors using screens, with concerns raised that both reduced time outdoors in nature and more screen time may lead to unfavourable psychological outcomes. 6 Current research suggests nature may be beneficial for children's brain and cognitive development, 7 as evidenced by threedimensional magnetic resonance imaging and cognitive testing, with specific improvements in working memory and attention. 8,9 Current research also indicates its beneficial effect on mental health and well-being, including reducing stress, 10,11 improving attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, [10][11][12][13] reducing depressive symptoms and psychological distress 13 and fostering emotional well-being. ...
Background
Urbanisation is taking place worldwide and rates of mental illness are rising. There has been increasing interest in ‘nature’ and how it may benefit mental health and well-being.
Aims
To understand how the literature defines nature; what the characteristics of the nature intervention are; what mental health and well-being outcomes are being measured; and what the evidence shows, in regard to how nature affects the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.
Method
A meta-review was conducted, searching three databases for relevant primary and secondary studies, using key search terms including ‘nature’ and ‘mental health’ and ‘mental well-being’. Inclusion criteria included published English-language studies on the child and adolescent population. Authors identified the highest quality evidence from studies meeting the inclusion criteria. Data were extracted and analysed using descriptive content analysis.
Results
Sixteen systematic reviews, two scoping reviews and five good quality cohort studies were included. ‘Nature’ was conceptualised along a continuum (the ‘nature research framework’) into three categories: a human-designed environment with natural elements; a human-designed natural environment; and a natural environment. The nature ‘intervention’ falls into three areas (the ‘nature intervention framework’): access, exposure and engagement with nature, with quantity and quality of nature relevant to all areas. Mental health and well-being outcomes fit along a continuum, with ‘disorder’ at one end and ‘well-being’ at the other. Nature appears to have a beneficial effect, but we cannot be certain of this.
Conclusions
Nature appears to have a beneficial effect on mental health and well-being of children and adolescents. Evidence is lacking on clinical populations, ethnically diverse populations and populations in low- and middle-income countries. Our results should be interpreted considering the limitations of the included studies and confidence in findings.
... Therefore, it is essential for both mental and physical health of the population that city planning boards create accessible green and blue spaces within all urban settings. This integration would allow the benefits that nature and cities both offer residents, and this design of built spaces could enhance human psychological functioning (Schertz & Berman, 2019). ...
Our contact with nature has decreased because of the increased urban lifestyle and the use of addictive personal technology for recreation. Yet, since childhood, we have had an innate yearning to spend time outdoors. Compared to the built environment, being in nature brings a broad sense of comfort and happiness-a place to feel relaxed, reflect on personal matters, and unearth one's creativity. There is a preponderance of scientific evidence that having more nature in our lives improves our physical and mental health and overall well-being.
... On the one hand, GSs provide recreational areas, promoting outdoor exercise and physical health [13,14]. On the other hand, they can directly enhance residents' mood, alleviate stress, restore focus, and, consequently, diminish the onset of disorders like depression [15][16][17]. The global trend of increasingly high population concentrations in urban areas is intensifying [18]. ...
Exposure to green spaces (GSs) has been perceived as a natural and sustainable solution to urban challenges, playing a vital role in rapid urbanization. Previous studies, due to their lack of direct spatial alignment and attention to a human-scale perspective, struggled to comprehensively measure urban GS exposure. To address this gap, our study introduces a novel GS exposure assessment framework, employing machine learning and street view images. We conducted a large-scale, fine-grained empirical study focused on downtown Shanghai. Our findings indicate a pronounced hierarchical structure in the distribution of GS exposure, which initially increases and subsequently decreases as one moves outward from the city center. Further, from both the micro and macro perspectives, we employed structural equation modeling and Geodetector to investigate the impact of the urban built environment on GS exposure. Our results highlight that maintaining an appropriate level of architectural density, enhancing the combination of sidewalks with GSs, emphasizing the diversity of regional characteristics, and avoiding excessive concentration of functions are effective approaches for increasing urban GS exposure and promoting human wellbeing. Our study offers scientific insights for urban planners and administrators, holding significant implications for achieving sustainable urban development.
... The authors conclude that ecotherapy is now greatly underestimated, and the cost of its popularization will be much less than for medicines and traditional methods of treatment [10]. The benefits of human contact with nature are confirmed by a relatively recent study by psychologists from the University of Chicago: it showed that staying among the greenery improves memory and cognitive functions, reduces anxiety and stress [11]. ...
The influence of nature on the psychological state of a person needs to be studied in connection with ongoing urbanization. Every day taller houses are being built, groves are being cut down for the construction of new residential complexes and greenery in urban areas is being reduced. At the same time cases of urban population reporting symptoms of depression, apathy and anxiety are becoming more frequent. Our review allows us to consider how urban greening affects the mental well-being of the population and what is the relationship between interaction with green areas and the development of human personality. It has been established that nature influences the mental state and well-being of a person both directly and indirectly through physical activity. Presencing children in nature encourages the development of their cognitive sphere, improving memory and creativity. There is a direction called ecopsychology, the central method of which is ecotherapy, which affects human psychology through therapeutic activities in green areas.
... Engaging in these activities offers a host of benefits, from physical strengthening to holistic healing, all of which contribute to longevity (Bell et al., 2018;Dushkova et al., 2021;Smith et al., 2022). In terms of emotional resonance, BGI enhances wellbeing by reducing stress and fatigue, evoking positive emotions, and providing therapeutic benefits (Kaplan, 1995;Kaplan, 1998;Poulsen et al., 2022;Schertz and Berman, 2019;Ulrich et al., 1991;White et al., 2021;Vaeztavakoli et al., 2018;P. Zhang et al., 2023). ...
Discourses concerning the potential health benefits of blue-green infrastructure (BGI) have gained momentum, highlighting its positive influence on human health and wellbeing. While studies have explored the concept of “Nature pyramid” and the role of exposure to natural environments in promoting health, the role of water elements remains underexplored. Rooted in this concept, this study proposed a notion of “blue-green diet" as a framework to understand the intricate mechanisms and determinants of optimal blue-green exposure. Understanding the relationship between these determinants and their health-related impacts can facilitate the enhancement of BGI design, leading to greater effectiveness in promoting health and wellbeing and supporting sustainable urban development strategies.
To enhance the comprehension of the “blue-green diet", this study conducted a systematic literature review to grasp the underlying mechanisms behind its beneficial effects, focusing on two key determinants of “blue-green diet", which are also derived from the concept of the “Nature Pyramid”: (1) the type of BGI and (2) the mode of interaction with and within BGIs. Under the search of BGI's overall health impacts, the study selected 54 journal publications concerning BGI's type and interaction mode from Web of Science and Scopus since 2010. The review revealed significant disparities in the health benefits provided by different types of BGI (in terms of artificial extent and scale) and between active and passive interaction modes. It examines how to balance natural and artificial elements for enhancing the benefits of BGI and discusses the attributes of BGI that encourage diverse and meaningful interaction patterns. These efforts collectively aim to optimize BGI design and planning, and to increase its capacity to promote health and extend its benefits to a wider range of individuals. Future research should encompass a broader spectrum of determinants, such as diverse BGI settings, visit frequency and duration, and user's social-cultural backgrounds.
... The studies that focused on the effect of nature on children's cognitive developmentthough their limited quantity have agreed that nature has a role in creating better attentional capacities, cognitive restoration, and performance in children (Dadvand et al., 2015;Gillis & Gatersleben, 2015;Schertz & Berman, 2019;Schutte et al., 2015;Wells, 2000). This is compatible with what the attention restoration theory (ART) states regarding nature being the most restorative environment that helps restore attention for better performance in children (Wells, 2000). ...
It is widely known how modern life from activities, games, and technologies has consumed children’s lives and attention, distracting them from the natural environment and its benefits. Moreover, although childcare centers are nowadays considered one of the primary environments where children spend most of their time, a child-nature connection is not much considered in their designs, giving more attention to technologies and artificial life. Environmental psychology theories declare that children are greatly affected by the surrounding physical environments, emphasizing nature as the richest environment that can feed their cognition and enhance their thinking skills, creativity, and development. A wealth of research studied the effect of nature-connected environments through biophilic design on children’s physical and psychological developmental aspects (226,975 articles since 2000). However, less concern is given to the cognitive development aspect (only 18.75% of the total), with a gap in terms of metacognition as a kind of high-order thinking. Metacognition enhances children's behavior and high-order thinking skills such as reflective thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the role of biophilic design in supporting metacognition in young children by conducting a multidisciplinary study that addresses the four theories Biophilic, Attention Restoration, Froebel’s theory, and Metacognition. The aim of this paper was achieved, firstly, by conducting a structured literature review in a multidisciplinary approach in Architectural, Environmental Psychology, Educational, and Cognitive Psychology fields using academic databases such as Elsevier, Scopus, Research Gate, and Academia. Secondly, analyzing the gathered data and the interrelations between the previously mentioned four selected theories. This paper’s findings show three conclusions; firstly, a restorative environment supports metacognition by stimulating reflective thinking and developing skills. Secondly, biophilic design’s attributes fulfill the factors for creating a restorative environment. Thirdly, specific metacognitive skills are supported by certain biophilic attributes. This paper revisits the design criteria for childcare centers providing a framework and a guideline abstracted from the biophilic approach for supporting children’s development and metacognition.
... On psychological responses, nature-based intervention is associated with positive changes in mood, reduced levels of anxiety and depression, and an overall enhancement in mental well-being (Hartig et al., 1996;Karjalainen et al., 2010;Jarosz, 2022;Pichlerová et al., 2023). Exposure to natural settings has been linked to improved attention, concentration, and cognitive performance (Schertz et al., 2019). Additionally, nature-based therapy has been shown to foster a sense of connection to the environment (Mayer & Frantz, 2004) and a heightened appreciation for the beauty of nature (Diessner & Steiner, 2017), contributing to emotional well-being (Richardson et al., 2019;Zelensky et al., 2014). ...
Examining the impact of the environment on the mental health of older adults is crucial in our aging society. Existing research on the restorative benefits of forests has largely overlooked older adults and, in most cases, focused only on group forest visits, which were restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explores the effects of individual walks on the mental health of adults aged 60 years or older in Slovakia. Through a randomized intervention study, participants were divided into groups walking in either forests or urban areas for 40 minutes over a month. The forest walking group exhibited significant improvements in cognitive flexibility, heart rate variability, and reduced acute and relative chronic stress levels, documented by Trail Making Test, photoplethysmography, and both salivary and hair cortisol measurements, respectively. The results were associated with forests featuring high species diversity and complex forest structures, typical in mixed forests with old trees. The respective patterns originated from natural processes or were achieved by more and less intense management for recreational purposes, illustrating manifold ways to ensure the desired, health- and subjective well-being-centered cultural ecosystem services of forests, specifically reflecting specific needs of older adults in the cognitive health domain.
While urban walking also benefits various quality-of-life aspects, forest walking is particularly notable for cognitive function enhancement. However, urban walking may be more suitable, convenient, or safer for frail older individuals, considering their sensitivity to factors impacting physical health. Specifically, walking in urban areas may be similarly beneficial as forest walking with regard to most of the quality-of-life components. However, when choosing between options available for walking in both forest and urban settings, the study findings strongly favor the former. The results underscore health- and subjective well- being-centered cultural ecosystem services of forests as crucial mental health support, including during crises for vulnerable groups like older adults. Integrating nature-based activities into mental health plans, specifically for these groups, is recommended. Collaboration between public health and forest management experts is vital to develop scalable frameworks focused on safe and accessible forest areas for older adults. Nature- based therapy enhances vitality and productivity in an extended retirement age context while ensuring green spaces benefit both individual and planetary well-being.
Keywords: forest and urban walking, older adults, cognitive flexibility, stress.
... Due to the high correlation between these variables, we examined the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) values of the variables (Weisberg 2005 (Zhou et al. 2022, Yakınlar andAkpınar 2022). Additionally, these variables also have a high Gini rank (Table S4) Yakınlar and Akpınar (2022), Zhou et al. (2022), and Gini features rank (Table S4) (Andrews et al. 2015, Rice et al. 2014 (Schertz andBerman 2019, Friston 2005 (Nordh et al. 2009, Halecki et al. 2023 (Hodson and Sander 2017). ...
According to the Attentional Restoration Theory (ART), cognitive restoration (e.g., Fascination) may occur when the physical environment exhibits high restorative quality. However, these studies usually ignore the effect of different levels of visual features on restoration quality, and small-scale questionnaires are difficult to use to comprehensively evaluate the restoration quality of a space. In this study, we propose a machine learning based method for high-resolution, large-scale assessment of the restoration quality of campus environments using Street View Images (SVIs). First, visual features are extracted from campus SVIs using computer vision method. Second, an online survey using the PRS-11 questionnaire (containing four indicators: Being-away, Coherence, Scope, and Fascination) was conducted to label the images. Finally, we developed a regression model to predict campus restorative quality and to model the non-linear relationship between the visual features of SVIs and this quality. We studied 1088 SVIs in the Lihu campus of Jiangnan University (JNU) to verify the feasibility of our method, and the results showed that SVIs can accurately help us predict the restoration quality of the campus environment on a large scale (R2 = 0.726). Next, we examined the variance in visual features between campus spaces with different levels of restorative quality, and investigated the effect of different levels of visual features on restoration quality. We found that contributions of high-level visual features to restoration, such as trees, are robust (Adj R2 = 0.504) compared to low-level visual features (Adj R2 = 0.032) that included such as color information. This provides a new perspective for assessing recovery environments and designing healthy campus environments. The code is shared at: https://github.com/MMHHRR/Restorative_Quality
... Extensive research indicates that NR can positively influence psychological well-being (Cracknell, Pahl, White, & Depledge, 2018;Franco, Shanahan, & Fuller, 2017;McMahan & Estes, 2015;Nutsford, Pearson, Kingham, & Reitsma, 2016;Passmore & Holder, 2017;Schertz & Berman, 2019), whereas psychological benefits of nature exposure can be derived as a function of NR (Berto, Barbiero, Barbiero, & Senes, 2018;Martin et al., 2020;Tang, Sullivan, & Chang, 2015;Qiu, Lindberg, & Nielsen, 2013;Southon, Jorgensen, Dunnett, Hoyle, & Evans, 2018). Mayer and Frantz (2009) found that individuals with high NR experienced more positive affect and capacity for reflection than those with low NR after a nature walk. ...
Climate change and environmental degradation are critical health challenges facing society, with eco-distress increasingly and more widely reported. Previous research indicates that nature relatedness (NR) may be implicated in eco-distress. The current cross-sectional, online study expands research on eco-distress. It was hypothesized that different types of NR would lead to different manifestations of eco-distress. Participants (N = 415) completed measures of NR (nature relatedness scale, proenvironmental self-identity scale, and connectedness to nature scale) and measures of eco-distress (climate change anxiety scale, solastalgia subscale of the environmental distress scale, and climate change worry scale). Results indicated that NR-perspective, proenvironmental self-identity, and connectedness to nature may influence the occurrence of eco-distress, whereas NR-self may be protective against eco-distress. Solastalgia accounted for 29% of the variance in eco-distress, suggesting that solastalgia, not climate change anxiety was the dominant emotional response implicated in eco-distress for those with high NR. Further research is required to develop robust measures of eco-distress and determine the reciprocal nature of eco-distress to environmental degradation and the bearing this has on individual, community, and global actions to advance nature and human wellbeing.
This chapter explores the integration of outdoor learning within geography education, emphasizing its methodologies, benefits, and barriers. It examines how outdoor learning enhances students’ understanding of geographical concepts through direct engagement with the natural environment. The discussion highlights the range of benefits, from academic improvements to developing teamwork skills, while addressing common barriers to implementation, including logistical challenges and curriculum constraints. Finally, practical recommendations for introducing and running outdoor-based classes in geography education are provided.
Exposure to nature can improve mental health and cognitive abilities, while creating enhanced engagement with biological course material through interactions with organisms and ecosystems. Remote biology education was suddenly implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic at many universities, and such distance education continues to provide broadened opportunities for active learning through hands-on lab and field activities. Remote science activities require explicit conversations and student training to address novel, off-campus safety issues. Here, we present inclusive approaches to safety instruction for incorporation into any biological undergraduate course. Remote lab learning not only develops students’ skills and self-efficacy in performing biology, but it also engages students in course content and stimulates their interest in observation-based research. This emphasis on safety will extend scientific practice into students’ lives while reducing risk during laboratory and field activities and afterward The safety considerations outlined here are designed to consider a global and diverse student population and will apply to a multitude of active-learning lab or field activities performed remotely by students.
Purpose: Digital transformation is of increasing relevance for both practitioners and scholars. Modern digital technologies, services, and systems are extremely important for social development because they are currently taking place in the economy, production, and society as a whole. This study delves into the crucial domain of electronic surveillance within the healthcare sector, assessing its influence on employee task performance. It investigates the interplay between electronic surveillance, perceived organizational support, and digital transformation. Our research aims to unravel how perceived organizational support moderates the relationship between electronic surveillance and task performance while also examining the mediating role of digital transformation in this dynamic. Design: This cross-sectional study utilizes purposive sampling to collect data from 428 participants from the healthcare sector of the province of Punjab, Pakistan. Findings: The findings indicate that electronic surveillance positively influences task performance, with digital transformation acting as a mediator. Additionally, perceived organizational support moderates this relationship, emphasizing its vital role in optimizing task performance. Theoretical Implications: This study advances understanding of workplace dynamics by elucidating how electronic surveillance, digital transformation, and perceived organizational support interact. It contributes valuable insights for organizational and management theories, emphasizing the need to consider these multifaceted factors in optimizing task performance. Practical Implications: This research provides valuable insights to healthcare organizations by shedding light on these multifaceted dynamics seeking to optimize task performance amid evolving technological landscapes and increased surveillance. Originality: This study pioneers the exploration of the intricate interplay between electronic surveillance, perceived organizational support, and digital transformation in the context of task performance in the healthcare sector of society.
Biophilic design has gained prominence in architecture as a strategy to integrate natural elements into built environments, aiming to improve human comfort, well-being, and environmental sustainability. This paper critically reviews existing biophilic design frameworks, identifying gaps in their integration of health outcomes and the relationship between indoor and outdoor environments, with a primary focus on indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors such as air quality, natural light, thermal comfort, and acoustics. The review was conducted systematically, comparing frameworks using criteria such as health benefits, human–nature connections, and user satisfaction. Key findings highlight a lack of comprehensive frameworks that explicitly link biophilic design to measurable improvements in human health, comfort, and satisfaction. To address this gap, the study proposes an enhanced biophilic design framework that bridges IEQ-focused indoor environments with urban outdoor elements, prioritizing human comfort alongside environmental sustainability. The framework also emphasizes the role of post-occupancy evaluation (POE) in assessing the real-world performance of biophilic interventions, particularly in achieving user satisfaction and ensuring long-term effectiveness. This research contributes to the advancement of biophilic design by offering actionable strategies for architects, urban planners, and policymakers to adopt biophilic principles that create resilient, healthy, and sustainable spaces. Additionally, the study emphasizes the need for empirical testing and validation of the proposed framework, including POE and user surveys, to assess its real-world impact on human well-being and satisfaction, thus setting the stage for future research.
In this chapter, we explore the fundamentals of the field of environmental neuroscience. We start by defining the field of environmental neuroscience and then proceed to describing its roots and outlining some of its distinguishing features. We define what we mean by an environment, including those factors that are considered in this work, focus on the effects of natural environments, and note why many researchers do the same. We then discuss some of the mechanisms through which natural environments may affect brain processing through the perception of different visual and acoustic features and the centrality of attentional processes. We close by discussing some of the pitfalls and challenges that environmental neuroscientists face and how those challenges may be overcome in the future.
Although visiting a park is usually considered to be a ‘nature experience’, not all city parks are natural environments. Additionally, parks differ in the affordances they offer in terms of amenities and other characteristics. In this pre-registered, cross-sectional study we asked participants (N = 303, Chicago, USA residents) to visit several city parks over the course of two weeks (N_obs = 1234). While visiting, they rated naturalness, safety, maintenance, and noisiness, and completed the Perceived Restoration Scale. They also reported on their momentary affect, subjective cognitive restoration, and preference for the park. Using both theory-driven and data-driven approaches, we found that all these qualities were related to affective and cognitive outcomes. Additionally, we found that when participants visited a park they had been to before, compatibility between activities they reported wanting to do in the park and the amenities offered by the park predicted preference, but this relationship did not hold when participants visited a park they hadn’t been to before. Overall, this study highlights the need to integrate approaches from both environmental psychology and leisure studies to generate more holistic and comprehensive recommendations for urban greening planning and policy.
The Attention Restoration Theory (ART) proposed four essential indicators (being away, extent, fascinating, and compatibility) for understanding urban and natural restoration quality. However, previous studies have overlooked the impact of spatial structure (the visual relationships between scene entities) and neighboring environments on restoration quality as they mostly relied on isolated questionnaires or images. This study introduces a spatial-dependent graph neural networks (GNNs) approach to address this gap and explore the relationship between spatial structure and restoration quality at a city scale. Two types of graphs were constructed: street-level graphs using sequential street view images (SVIs) to capture visual relationships between entities and represent spatial structure, and city-level graphs modeling the topological relationships of roads to capture the spatial features of neighboring entities, integrating perceptual, spatial, and socioeconomic features to measure restoration quality. The results demonstrated that spatial-dependent GNNs outperform traditional models, achieving an accuracy (Acc) of 0.742 and an F1 score of 0.740, indicating their exceptional ability to capture features of adjacent spaces. Ablation experiments further revealed the substantial positive impact of spatial structure features on the predictive performance for restoration quality. Moreover, the study highlighted the greater significance of naturally relevant entities (e.g., trees) compared to artificial entities (e.g., buildings) in relation to high restoration quality. This study clarifies the association between spatial structure and restoration quality, providing a new perspective to improve urban well-being in the future.
This chapter reviews the main debate and findings on the intersection between traditional forms of poverty and the rise of digital technologies. It starts by introducing the concept of poverty, albeit briefly (for a more comprehensive debate around poverty see Blocker et al., 2023; Lister, 2021; Spicker, 2007), acknowledging its multidimensional nature and emphasizing the need to analyze and understand it beyond the mere lack of financial resources or household income. This chapter aims to identify potential new dimensions that should be included in this concept, fostering a more comprehensive approach to addressing poverty in the digital age. It delves into the transformative influence of digital technologies as they intertwine with the daily experiences of individuals, influencing the definition and manifestations of poverty. Our focus is directed toward key definitions discussed in the literature related to digital disadvantages, including digital inequalities, digital exclusion, digital capital, and the digital divide. We posit that the conventional understanding of poverty necessitates a revision to account for the pervasive influence of digital technologies. In so doing, we reflect on the emergence of a new social group: the digital underclass. This marginalized segment of the population faces the risk of being left behind, primarily due to the rapid technology advancements imposed by the pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis. We also discuss how different digital experiences may underpin diverse levels of poverty in the digital age. Finally, we briefly focus on the evolution of digital inequalities at a global level.
Humans have been exposed to a continuous stream of scenes since the first day of life. Through constant processing and encoding of scenes, the human brain develops scene knowledge that aids current scene understanding and guides future scene memory and decision-making. In this chapter, we will discuss how humans’ scene memories and understandings are shaped by (1) scene-level properties that are intrinsic to a scene or that arise through comparisons, (2) observer-level properties, such as prior knowledge, cognitive states, and ages, and (3) new knowledge generated through the interactions between scene- and observer level information.
Current studies emphasise that nature plays a key role in geography education. However, little research has been devoted to elucidating the underlying mechanisms by which nature contact (NC) influences academic achievement. With the aim of filling this gap, this study provides a serial multiple mediator model that examines how contact with nature promotes academic achievement in geography (AAG) and is further associated with the serial multiple mediating effect of students’ sense of place (SOP) and geospatial thinking (GT). A self-report questionnaire was administered to 885 senior high-school students in China. The results indicated that the positive association between NC and students’ AAG was not only mediated by an SOP and GT but also serially mediated by an SOP and GT. The findings and details are valuable for educational researchers and practising teachers, as they extend our understanding of the factors influencing AAG and how they correlate with geography learning processes.
Nature exposure has numerous psychological benefits, and previous findings suggest that exposure to nature reduces self-reported acute pain. Given the multi-faceted and subjective quality of pain and methodological limitations of prior research, it is unclear whether the evidence indicates genuine hypoalgesia or results from domain-general effects and subjective reporting biases. This preregistered functional neuroimaging study aimed to identify how nature exposure modulates nociception-related and domain-general brain responses to acute pain. We compared the self-reported and neural responses of healthy neurotypical participants (N = 49) receiving painful electrical shocks while exposed to virtual nature or to closely matched urban and indoor control settings. Replicating existing behavioral evidence, pain was reported to be lower during exposure to the natural compared to the urban or indoor control settings. Crucially, machine-learning-based multi-voxel signatures of pain demonstrated that this subjective hypoalgesia was associated with reductions in nociception-related rather than domain-general cognitive-emotional neural pain processing. Preregistered region-of-interest analyses corroborated these results, highlighting reduced activation of areas connected to lower-level somatosensory aspects of pain processing (such as the thalamus, secondary somatosensory cortex, and posterior insula). These findings demonstrate that nature exposure results in genuine hypoalgesia and that neural changes in lower-level nociceptive pain processing predominantly underpin this effect. This advances our understanding of how nature may be used as a non-pharmacological pain treatment. That this hypoalgesia was achieved with brief and easy-to-administer virtual nature exposure has important practical implications and opens novel avenues for research on the precise mechanisms by which nature impacts our mind and brain.
In two online studies, we tested the “nature-as-reward hypothesis”, which suggests that superior cognitive task performance following nature exposure reflects a general performance improvement, driven by the reward value of beautiful things. In both between-subjects experiments, participants viewed either beautiful or less beautiful images for 10 s, comprising beautiful mountain photos (vs. less beautiful mountain drawings) in Study 1 and beautiful fractals (vs. less beautiful pixelated images) in Study 2. Following image exposure, participants engaged in a ticking task requiring them to freely tick up to 200 boxes. Participants had to complete four (Study 1) or five (Study 2) of such ticking tasks, with each task being preceded by either a beautiful or less beautiful image. In Study 1, for a subset of participants the ticking task was framed as a game. We found that in Study 1, ticking declined over the ticking rounds when participants had viewed less beautiful line drawings of mountains, while ticking performance remained unchanged over the rounds after seeing beautiful mountain images. However, when the ticking task was framed as a game, there was no significant difference in ticking performance between the two beauty conditions over the four ticking rounds. In Study 2, participants ticked more boxes over all ticking rounds after viewing images of beautiful fractals compared to less beautiful pixelated images. In line with the nature-as-reward hypothesis, these findings show that brief exposures to beautiful (nature) images can motivate to work and that framing tasks as a game can attenuate this beauty advantage.
Migrants of non-European origin tend to suffer more from diabetes, obesity and other chronic ailments compared to the native population. A group of female Turkish migrants in ill health, living in Denmark, were invited to join a session of eleven weekly meetings in natural surroundings, including yoga, bonfires and gathering fruits and herbs. The women were invited to suggest activities, and every meeting included dialogues focusing on their everyday life, interests and experiences. Two PAR researchers facilitated the meetings together with an interpreter. This article presents the methods and results of this PAR research and discusses the methodological ethnographic balance between approaching the migrants’ weaknesses in terms of their illness and migratory challenges on the one hand and, on the other, their transnational resources as workers, household keepers and kin keepers.
Engaging in contemplative practice like meditation, yoga, and prayer, is beneficial for psychological and physical well-being. Recent research has identified several underlying psychological and biological pathways that explain these benefits. However, there is not yet consensus on the underlying overlapping physiological mechanisms of contemplative practice benefits. In this article, we integrate divergent scientific literatures on contemplative practice interventions, stress science, and mitochondrial biology, presenting a unified biopsychosocial model of how contemplative practices reduce stress and promote physical health. We argue that engaging in contemplative practice facilitates a restorative state termed “deep rest,” largely through safety signaling, during which energetic resources are directed toward cellular optimization and away from energy-demanding stress states. Our model thus presents a framework for how contemplative practices enhance positive psychological and physiological functioning by optimizing cellular energy consumption.
Exposure to (virtual) natural environments may encourage people to care about environmental protection and to engage in pro‐environmental behaviour. Previous research on this effect produced inconsistent results, suggesting that it may depend on the type of nature and behaviour under study. In the present study ( N = 266), we investigated nature exposure effects on effortful pro‐environmental behaviour in an online experiment. After watching pictures of either intact or destroyed natural environments, participants could exert voluntary extra efforts to generate real donations to an environmental organisation. In comparison to the intact nature condition, participants exerted significantly more effort for environmental protection after being exposed to pictures of destroyed nature. No clear differences were observed between the nature exposure conditions and a no‐picture control condition. These findings illustrate the complexity of nature exposure effects and suggest that different types of nature exposure may differentially affect people's pro‐environmental behaviour.
Prescribed nature walks frequently yield improvements to mood and cognition as observed in experimental studies. Research that uses real life settings such as self-determined time exercising outdoors for restorative health benefits may more accurately elicit effects than time-specified study protocols. This study examined in situ psycho-cognitive outcomes of routine walks in urban greenspace to test the concept that self-set exposure duration and not context alone is related to magnitude of psycho-cognitive benefit. Pre-post measurements taken on a diverse participant pool of individuals walking in urban parks and recruited on random days over a two-week period found significant associations between outdoor activity duration and cognitive and mood improvements. Greater outdoor walking duration linearly predicted stronger processing speeds but non-linearly in tests of other cognitive domains. Results of fixed effects model for mean mood change following green exercise show outdoor walking influenced mood change at highest levels of significance, even after accounting for individual level variability in duration. Mood improved for all durations of outdoor walking under a random effects model with high significance. Untethering fixed intervals of outdoor exercise from formal study design revealed briefer but more frequent nature engagement aligned with nature affinity. The influence of unmeasured factors, e.g., nature affinity or restorative conditioning, for prescriptive durations of urban green exercise merits further investigation toward designing wellbeing interventions directed at specific urban populations.
Interactions with natural environments and nature-related stimuli have been found to be beneficial to cognitive performance, in particular on executive cognitive tasks with high demands on directed attention processes. However, results vary across different studies. The aim of the present paper was to evaluate the effects of nature vs. urban environments on cognitive performance across all of our published and new/unpublished studies testing the effects of different interactions with nature vs. urban/built control environments, on an executive-functioning test with high demands on directed attention—the backwards digit span (BDS) task. Specific aims in this study were to: (1) evaluate the effect of nature vs. urban environment interactions on BDS across different exposure types (e.g., real-world vs. artificial environments/stimuli); (2) disentangle the effects of testing order (i.e., effects caused by the order in which experimental conditions are administered) from the effects of the environment interactions, and (3) test the (mediating) role of affective changes on BDS performance. To this end, data from 13 experiments are presented, and pooled data-analyses are performed. Results from the pooled data-analyses (N = 528 participants) showed significant time-by-environment interactions with beneficial effects of nature compared to urban environments on BDS performance. There were also clear interactions with the order in which environment conditions were tested. Specifically, there were practice effects across environment conditions in first sessions. Importantly, after parceling out initial practice effects, the positive effects of nature compared to urban interactions on BDS performance were magnified. Changes in positive or negative affect did not mediate the beneficial effects of nature on BDS performance. These results are discussed in relation to the findings of other studies identified in the literature. Uncontrolled and confounding order effects (i.e., effects due to the order of experimental conditions, rather than the treatment conditions) may explain some of the inconsistent findings across studies in the literature on nature effects on cognitive performance. In all, these results highlight the robustness of the effects of natural environments on cognition, particularly when confounding order effects have been considered, and provide a more nuanced account of when a nature intervention will be most effective.
Despite being intuitive, cognitive effort has proven difficult to quantify. In the current study we validated the correspondence between scale-invariance (H) of cortical activity recorded by EEG and task load during two working memory (WM) experiments with varying set sizes. We used this neural signature to disentangle cognitive effort from the number of items in WM. Our results showed monotonic decreases in H with increased set size, even after set size exceeded WM capacity. This behavior of H contrasted with behavioral performance and an oscillatory indicator of WM load (i.e., alpha-band desynchronization), both of which showed a plateau at difficulty levels surpassing WM capacity. This is the first reported evidence for the suppression of scale-invariance in EEG due to task difficulty, and our work suggest that H suppression may be used to quantify changes in effort even when working memory load is constant and at maximum capacity.
Link: https://rdcu.be/brEOv
Disorderly environments are linked to disorderly behaviors. Broken windows theory (Wilson & Kelling, 1982), an influential theory of crime and rule-breaking, assumes that scene-level social disorder cues (e.g., litter, graffiti) cause people to reason that they can get away with breaking rules. But what if part of the story is not about such complex social reasoning? Recent research suggests that basic visual disorder cues may be sufficient to encourage complex rule-breaking behavior. To test this hypothesis, we first conducted a set of experiments (Experiments 1–3) in which we identified basic visual disorder cues that generalize across visual stimuli with a variety of semantic content. Our results revealed that spatial features (e.g., nonstraight edges, asymmetry) are more important than color features (e.g., hue, saturation, value) for visual disorder. Exploiting this knowledge, we then reconstructed stimuli contrasted in terms of visual disorder, but absent of scene-level social disorder cues, to test whether visual disorder alone encourages cheating in a second set of experiments (Experiments 4 and 5). In these experiments, manipulating visual disorder increased the likelihood of cheating by up to 35% and the average magnitude of cheating by up to 87%. This work suggests that theories of rule-breaking that assume that complex social reasoning (e.g., about norms, policing, poverty) is necessary, should be reconsidered (e.g., Kelling & Coles, 1997; Sampson & Raudenbush, 2004). Furthermore, these experiments show that simple perceptual properties of the environment can affect complex behavior and sheds light on the extent to which our actions are within our control.
Real-world scenes contain low-level visual features (e.g., edges, colors) and high-level semantic features (e.g., objects and places). Traditional visual perception models assume that integration of low-level visual features and segmentation of the scene must occur before high-level semantics are perceived. This view implies that low-level visual features of a scene alone do not carry semantic information related to that scene. Here we present evidence that suggests otherwise. We show that high-level semantics can be preserved in low-level visual features, and that different high-level semantics can be preserved in different types of low-level visual features. Spe is preserved in edge features better than color features, whereas the converse is true These findings suggest that semantic processing may start earlier than thought before, and integration of low-level visual features and segmentation of the scene may occur after semantic processing has begun, or in parallel.
There is growing evidence that fluctuations in brain activity may exhibit scale-free (“fractal”) dynamics. Scale-free signals follow a spectral-power curve of the form P(f ) ∝ f−β, where spectral power decreases in a power-law fashion with increasing frequency. In this study, we demonstrated that fractal scaling of BOLD fMRI signal is consistently suppressed for different sources of cognitive effort. Decreases in the Hurst exponent (H), which quantifies scale-free signal, was related to three different sources of cognitive effort/task engagement: 1) task difficulty, 2) task novelty, and 3) aging effects. These results were consistently observed across multiple datasets and task paradigms. We also demonstrated that estimates of H are robust across a range of time-window sizes. H was also compared to alternative metrics of BOLD variability (SDBOLD) and global connectivity (Gconn), with effort-related decreases in H producing similar decreases in SDBOLD and Gconn. These results indicate a potential global brain phenomenon that unites research from different fields and indicates that fractal scaling may be a highly sensitive metric for indexing cognitive effort/task engagement.
Significance
Green spaces have a range of health benefits, but little is known in relation to cognitive development in children. This study, based on comprehensive characterization of outdoor surrounding greenness (at home, school, and during commuting) and repeated computerized cognitive tests in schoolchildren, found an improvement in cognitive development associated with surrounding greenness, particularly with greenness at schools. This association was partly mediated by reductions in air pollution. Our findings provide policymakers with evidence for feasible and achievable targeted interventions such as improving green spaces at schools to attain improvements in mental capital at population level.
Previous research has shown that viewing images of nature scenes can have a beneficial effect on memory, attention, and mood. In this study, we aimed to determine whether the preference of natural versus man-made scenes is driven by bottom–up processing of the low-level visual features of nature. We used participants’ ratings of perceived naturalness as well as esthetic preference for 307 images with varied natural and urban content. We then quantified 10 low-level image features for each image (a combination of spatial and color properties). These features were used to predict esthetic preference in the images, as well as to decompose perceived naturalness to its predictable (modeled by the low-level visual features) and non-modeled aspects. Interactions of these separate aspects of naturalness with the time it took to make a preference judgment showed that naturalness based on low-level features related more to preference when the judgment was faster (bottom–up). On the other hand, perceived naturalness that was not modeled by low-level features was related more to preference when the judgment was slower. A quadratic discriminant classification analysis showed how relevant each aspect of naturalness (modeled and non-modeled) was to predicting preference ratings, as well as the image features on their own. Finally, we compared the effect of color-related and structure-related modeled naturalness, and the remaining unmodeled naturalness in predicting esthetic preference. In summary, bottom–up (color and spatial) properties of natural images captured by our features and the non-modeled naturalness are important to esthetic judgments of natural and man-made scenes, with each predicting unique variance.
Previous research has shown that interacting with natural environments vs. more urban or built environments can have salubrious psychological effects, such as improvements in attention and memory. Even viewing pictures of nature vs. pictures of built environments can produce similar effects. A major question is: What is it about natural environments that produces these benefits? Problematically, there are many differing qualities between natural and urban environments, making it difficult to narrow down the dimensions of nature that may lead to these benefits. In this study, we set out to uncover visual features that related to individuals' perceptions of naturalness in images. We quantified naturalness in two ways: first, implicitly using a multidimensional scaling analysis and second, explicitly with direct naturalness ratings. Features that seemed most related to perceptions of naturalness were related to the density of contrast changes in the scene, the density of straight lines in the scene, the average color saturation in the scene and the average hue diversity in the scene. We then trained a machine-learning algorithm to predict whether a scene was perceived as being natural or not based on these low-level visual features and we could do so with 81% accuracy. As such we were able to reliably predict subjective perceptions of naturalness with objective low-level visual features. Our results can be used in future studies to determine if these features, which are related to naturalness, may also lead to the benefits attained from interacting with nature.
Within the field of restorative environments research, it is commonly assumed that restorative responses, triggered by exposure to natural elements and settings, are ultimately adaptive traits originating from our species’ long evolutionary history in natural environments. The aim of this article is to critically investigate the viability of this evolutionary view on restoration. In doing so, we specifically focus on Stress Recovery Theory (SRT), as this theoretical framework has most extensively elaborated on the supposed evolutionary origins of restoration. A detailed analysis of SRT's psycho-evolutionary framework shows that neither current empirical evidence nor conceptual arguments provide any strong support for the hypothesis of restorative responses to nature as an ancient evolved adaptive trait. Based on this conclusion we put forward an alternative model for restorative responses to nature based on processing fluency, which prima facie circumvents some of the pitfalls associated with evolutionary accounts for restoration. The Discussion section reflects on the implications of our critical discussion for the theory and practice of urban forestry and urban greening.
S. Kaplan suggested that one outcome of mental fatigue may be an increased propensity for outbursts of anger and even violence. If so, contact with nature, which appears to mitigate mental fatigue, may reduce aggression and violence. This study investigated that possibility in a setting and population with relatively high rates of aggression: inner-city urban public housing residents. Levels of aggression were compared for 145 urban public housing residents randomly assigned to buildings with varying levels of nearby nature (trees and grass). Attentional functioning was assessed as an index of mental fatigue. Residents living in relatively barren buildings reported more aggression and violence than did their counterparts in greener buildings. Moreover, levels of mental fatigue were higher in barren buildings, and aggression accompanied mental fatigue. Tests for the proposed mechanism and for alternative mechanisms indicated that the relationship between nearby nature and aggression was fully mediated through attentional functioning.
Argues that evolutionary heritage underlies humans' consistent preference for stimuli from the natural environment and that research on affective and aesthetic responses is needed to understand human interaction with the environment. It is noted that the rapidly expanding empirical record concerning aesthetic and affective responses to natural environments is in need of a well-developed theoretical foundation. An integrated conceptual framework to address this theoretical lack, drawing on recent theory and research on emotion, is proposed. This framework explains how affects arise in the natural environment; postulates their functions; and links them to cognition, activity in physiological systems, and behavior. The present author, in developing the framework, questions the view that feelings result from cognitive processes, asserting that feelings (not thoughts) are the initial response in environmental encounters. The observer's initial feeling reaction shapes subsequent cognitive events. The relative sequence of feeling and thinking in environmental encounters represents a fundamental issue in understanding human interaction with the environment. (98 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We as a species are losing rich and diverse forms of interaction with nature: the awe, for example, of encountering an animal in the wild or a slug underfoot, of sleeping under the night sky, or of even seeing the night sky in our urban settings. The loss is happening quickly (in terms of decades) and potentially impoverishing us as a species, physically and psychologically. Toward addressing this problem, we propose a new research agenda that is focused on generating what we are calling a Nature Language—a way of speaking about patterns of interactions between humans and nature and their wide range of instantiations, and the meaningful, deep, and often joyful feelings that they engender. Many of these patterns presumably emerged during the course of our evolutionary history. In this article, we share some of our initial thinking about a nature language so as to initiate dialog with the ecopsychology community. If a nature language project proves successful, it will allow people to speak more readily and compre-hensively about what is beautiful in our relation with nature, and what is missing but still possible if we change course.
This study aimed to explore whether walking in nature may be beneficial for individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD). Healthy adults demonstrate significant cognitive gains after nature walks, but it was unclear whether those same benefits would be achieved in a depressed sample as walking alone in nature might induce rumination, thereby worsening memory and mood.
Twenty individuals diagnosed with MDD participated in this study. At baseline, mood and short term memory span were assessed using the PANAS and the backwards digit span (BDS) task, respectively. Participants were then asked to think about an unresolved negative autobiographical event to prime rumination, prior to taking a 50-min walk in either a natural or urban setting. After the walk, mood and short-term memory span were reassessed. The following week, participants returned to the lab and repeated the entire procedure, but walked in the location not visited in the first session (i.e., a counterbalanced within-subjects design).
Participants exhibited significant increases in memory span after the nature walk relative to the urban walk, p<.001, η(p)(2)=.53 (a large effect-size). Participants also showed increases in mood, but the mood effects did not correlate with the memory effects, suggesting separable mechanisms and replicating previous work.
Sample size and participants' motivation.
These findings extend earlier work demonstrating the cognitive and affective benefits of interacting with nature to individuals with MDD. Therefore, interacting with nature may be useful clinically as a supplement to existing treatments for MDD.
Children growing up in the inner city are at risk of academic underachievement, juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and other important negative outcomes. Avoiding these outcomes requires self-discipline. Self-discipline, in turn, may draw on directed attention, a limited resource that can be renewed through contact with nature. This study examined the relationship between near-home nature and three forms of self-discipline in 169 inner city girls and boys randomly assigned to 12 architecturally identical high-rise buildings with varying levels of nearby nature. Parent ratings of the naturalness of the view from home were used to predict children's performance on tests of concentration, impulse inhibition, and delay of gratification. Regressions indicated that, on average, the more natural a girl's view from home, the better her performance at each of these forms of self-discipline. For girls, view accounted for 20% of the variance in scores on the combined self-discipline index. For boys, who typically spend less time playing in and around their homes, view from home showed no relationship to performance on any measure. These findings suggest that, for girls, green space immediately outside the home can help them lead more effective, self-disciplined lives. For boys, perhaps more distant green spaces are equally important.
We compare the restorative effects on cognitive functioning of interactions with natural versus urban environments. Attention restoration theory (ART) provides an analysis of the kinds of environments that lead to improvements in directed-attention abilities. Nature, which is filled with intriguing stimuli, modestly grabs attention in a bottom-up fashion, allowing top-down directed-attention abilities a chance to replenish. Unlike natural environments, urban environments are filled with stimulation that captures attention dramatically and additionally requires directed attention (e.g., to avoid being hit by a car), making them less restorative. We present two experiments that show that walking in nature or viewing pictures of nature can improve directed-attention abilities as measured with a backwards digit-span task and the Attention Network Task, thus validating attention restoration theory.
People across the world seek out beautiful sounds in nature, such as a babbling brook or a nightingale song, for positive human experiences. However, it is unclear whether this positive aesthetic response is driven by a preference for the perceptual features typical of nature sounds versus a higher‐order association of nature with beauty. To test these hypotheses, participants provided aesthetic judgments for nature and urban soundscapes that varied on ease of recognition. Results demonstrated that the aesthetic preference for nature soundscapes was eliminated for the sounds hardest to recognize, and moreover the relationship between aesthetic ratings and several measured acoustic features significantly changed as a function of recognition. In a follow‐up experiment, requiring participants to classify these difficult‐to‐identify sounds into nature or urban categories resulted in a robust preference for nature sounds and a relationship between aesthetic ratings and our measured acoustic features that was more typical of easy‐to‐identify sounds. This pattern of results was replicated with computer‐generated artificial noises, which acoustically shared properties with the nature and urban soundscapes but by definition did not come from these environments. Taken together, these results support the conclusion that the recognition of a sound as either natural or urban dynamically organizes the relationship between aesthetic preference and perceptual features and that these preferences are not inherent to the acoustic features. Implications for nature's role in cognitive and affective restoration are discussed.
Attention restoration theory (ART) posits that stimuli found in nature may restore directed attention functioning by reducing demands on the endogenous attention system. In the present experiment, we assessed whether nature-related cognitive benefits extended to auditory presentations of nature, a topic that has been understudied. To assess directed attention, we created a composite measure consisting of a backward digit span task and a dual n-back task. Participants completed these cognitive measures and an affective questionnaire before and after listening to and aesthetically judging either natural or urban soundscapes (between-participants). Relative to participants who were exposed to urban soundscapes, we observed significant improvements in cognitive performance for individuals exposed to nature. Urban soundscapes did not systematically affect performance either adversely or beneficially. Natural sounds did not differentially change positive or negative affect, despite these sounds being aesthetically preferred to urban sounds. These results provide initial evidence that brief experiences with natural sounds can improve directed attention functioning in a single experimental session.
Attention Restoration Theory (ART) predicts exposure to natural environments may lead to improved cognitive performance through restoration of a limited cognitive resource, directed attention. A recent review by Ohly and colleagues (2016) uncovered substantial ambiguity surrounding details of directed attention and how cognitive restoration was tested. Therefore, an updated systematic review was conducted to identify relevant cognitive domains from which to describe elements of directed attention sensitive to the restoration effect. Forty-two articles that tested natural environments or stimuli against a suitable control, and included an objective measure of cognitive performance, had been published since July 2013. Articles were subjected to screening procedures and quality appraisal. Random effects meta-analyses were performed to calculate pooled effect sizes across 8 cognitive domains using data from 49 individual outcome measures. Results showed that working memory, cognitive flexibility, and to a less-reliable degree, attentional control, are improved after exposure to natural environments, with low to moderate effect sizes. Moderator analyses revealed that actual exposures to real environments may enhance the restoration effect within these three domains, relative to virtual exposures; however, this may also be due to differences in the typical lengths of exposure. The effect of a participants’ restoration potential, based upon diagnosis or fatigue-induction, was less clear. A new framework is presented to qualify the involvement of directed attention-related processes, using examples of tasks from the three cognitive domains found to be sensitive to the restoration effect. The review clarifies the description of cognitive processes sensitive to natural environments, using current evidence, while exploring aspects of protocol that appear influential to the strength of the restoration effect.
Prior research has shown that the physical characteristics of one's environment have wide ranging effects on affect and cognition. Other research has demonstrated that one's thoughts have impacts on mood and behavior, and in this three-part research program we investigated how physical features of the environment can alter thought content. In one study, we analyzed thousands of journal entries written by park visitors to examine how low-level and semantic visual features of the parks correlate with different thought topics. In a second study, we validated our ecological results by conducting an online study where participants were asked to write journal entries while imagining they were visiting a park, to ensure that results from Study 1 were not due to selection bias of park visitors. In the third study, we experimentally manipulated exposure to specific visual features to determine if they induced thinking about the same thought topics under more generalized conditions. Results from Study 3 demonstrated a potential causal role for perceived naturalness and high non-straight edges on thinking about "Nature", with a significant positive interaction. Results also showed a potential causal effect of naturalness and non-straight edges on thinking about topics related to "Spiritual & Life Journey", with perceived naturalness having a negative relationship and non-straight edges having a positive relationship. We also observed a significant positive interaction between non-straight edge density and naturalness in relation to "Spiritual & Life Journey". These results have implications for the design of the built environment to influence human reflection and well-being.
Natural features, settings, and processes in urban areas can help to reduce stress associated with urban life. In this and other ways, public health benefits from, street trees, green roofs, community gardens, parks and open spaces, and extensive connective pathways for walking and biking. Such urban design provisions can also yield ecological benefits, not only directly but also through the role they play in shaping attitudes toward the environment and environmental protection. Knowledge of the psychological benefits of nature experience supports efforts to better integrate nature into the architecture, infrastructure, and public spaces of urban areas.
This study investigated the impact of nature experience on affect and cognition. We randomly assigned sixty participants to a 50-min walk in either a natural or an urban environment in and around Stanford, California. Before and after their walk, participants completed a series of psychological assessments of affective and cognitive functioning. Compared to the urban walk, the nature walk resulted in affective benefits (decreased anxiety, rumination, and negative affect, and preservation of positive affect) as well as cognitive benefits (increased working memory performance). This study extends previous research by demonstrating additional benefits of nature experience on affect and cognition through assessments of anxiety, rumination, and a complex measure of working memory (operation span task). These findings further our understanding of the influence of relatively brief nature experiences on affect and cognition, and help to lay the foundation for future research on the mechanisms underlying these effects.
Available here: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1QdlwcUG4~B3U
A growing body of empirical research suggests that brief contact with natural environments improves emotional well-being. The current study synthesizes this body of research using meta-analytic techniques and assesses the mean effect size of exposure to natural environments on both positive and negative affect. Thirty-two studies with a total of 2356 participants were included. Across these studies, exposure to natural environments was associated with a moderate increase in positive affect and a smaller, yet consistent, decrease in negative affect relative to comparison conditions. Significant heterogeneity was found for the effect of nature on positive affect, and type of emotion assessment, type of exposure to nature, location of study, and mean age of sample were found to moderate this effect. The implications of these findings for existing theory and research are discussed, with particular emphasis placed on potential avenues for fruitful future research examining the effects of nature on well-being.
Three experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that exposure to restorative environments facilitates recovery from mental fatigue. To this end, participants were first mentally fatigued by performing a sustained attention test; then they viewed photographs of restorative environments, nonrestorative environments or geometrical patterns; and finally they performed the sustained attention test again. Only participants exposed to the restorative environments improved their performance on the final attention test, and this improvement occurred whether they viewed the scenes in the standardized time condition or in the self-paced time condition. Results are in agreement with Kaplan's [(1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 169–182] attention restoration theory, and support the idea that restorative environments help maintain and restore the capacity to direct attention.
People tend to recover more quickly from stress and mental fatigue in natural than in urban environments. But natural environments may not always be restorative. Dense wooded areas may evoke fear and stress and require directed attention to avoid getting lost or tripping over. Little is known about the restorative potential of such environments. Two experiments were conducted to examine restoration in natural settings with different levels of accessibility, prospect (clear field of vision) and refuge (places to hide). An on-line survey (n=269) examined perceived restoration of environments presented in a slide show. An experiment examined actual restoration in response to walks in a real outdoor setting (n=17) and in response to videos of the same walks (in a laboratory; n=17). The findings demonstrate that exposure to natural environments with high levels of prospect and low levels of refuge, is indeed restorative. However, exposure to natural environments low in prospect and high in refuge is not, and may even further increase levels of stress and attention fatigue. These findings demonstrate that natural places may not always be restorative places.
Directed attention plays an important role in human information processing; its fatigue, in turn, has far-reaching consequences. Attention Restoration Theory provides an analysis of the kinds of experiences that lead to recovery from such fatigue. Natural environments turn out to be particularly rich in the characteristics necessary for restorative experiences. An integrative framework is proposed that places both directed attention and stress in the larger context of human-environment relationships.
Ministerial vacations: Their necessity and value
- W H H Murray
- R James
- Osgood
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Is love for green in our genes? A critical analysis of evolutionary assumptions in restorative environments research. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening
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