Rethinking Restoration: The Effects of Natural and Urban Environments on Attention and Affect

The present study investigates the restorative effects of natural and urban environments on attentional control and emotional states. Utilizing the Additional Singleton task, participants were tested for reaction times and accuracy before and after exposure to images of nature and urban settings. Contrary to the Attention Restoration Theory (ART), which posits a superiority of natural settings in restoring directed attention, our results indicated that exposure to urban environments enhanced attentional control in situations where distractive stimuli are present. The results revealed that exposure to urban scenery can have restorative benefits on attentional capture, mitigating attentional fatigue and resulting in improved reaction times and accuracy in a visual search task following exposure. Exposure to urban environments resulted in a decline in positive affect, while both types of scenery led to reduced negative affect. Participants exhibited a preference for natural over urban...Show moreThe present study investigates the restorative effects of natural and urban environments on attentional control and emotional states. Utilizing the Additional Singleton task, participants were tested for reaction times and accuracy before and after exposure to images of nature and urban settings. Contrary to the Attention Restoration Theory (ART), which posits a superiority of natural settings in restoring directed attention, our results indicated that exposure to urban environments enhanced attentional control in situations where distractive stimuli are present. The results revealed that exposure to urban scenery can have restorative benefits on attentional capture, mitigating attentional fatigue and resulting in improved reaction times and accuracy in a visual search task following exposure. Exposure to urban environments resulted in a decline in positive affect, while both types of scenery led to reduced negative affect. Participants exhibited a preference for natural over urban scenery, although this preference did not correlate with changes in attentional or emotional measures. The findings challenge the prevailing notion of the distinct advantage of natural environments in cognitive and emotional restoration and suggest that urban settings also might possess restorative qualities. Future studies should investigate the specific aspects of urban environments that contribute to these outcomes, emphasizing the importance of comprehensively understanding how different environmental factors affect overall well-being.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Rethinking Restoration: The Effects of Natural and Urban Environments on Attention and Affect