Indeed, there is ample evidence that participants perform better in demanding cognitive tasks after walking in nature for 30 min than after walking for the same time in an urban environment. SRT puts forward the idea that nature reduces the level of psychological stress, while ART proposes that nature as opposed to urban environments helps to replenish attentional resources. Other psychology-based theories provide more cognitive explanations, such as stress recovery theory (SRT ) or attention restoration theory (ART ). ).Įvolutionary theory, in particular the so-called biophilia hypothesis, proposes that human beings have an innate need to connect with nature and to affiliate with different forms of biological life. Though some authors have suggested that even factors such as the biodiversity of a green space might play a crucial role (e.g. Yet, what exactly it is in such green spaces or in nature more generally that leads to restorative effects and how much exposure is needed to obtain restorative benefits remains unclear. Similarly, active commuting through nature environments as opposed to build environments is associated with better mental health and increased cognitive performance. For example, living close to green spaces has been shown to reduce stress and to improve physical and mental well-being alike. In this context, psychological restoration refers to the ability to replenish one's cognitive resources that deplete by everyday activities in cognitively demanding environments and reduces stress levels. Another factor often raised is the importance of exposure to nature or blue-green infrastructure in the form of parks and closeness to water for restorative purposes, with supporting evidence coming from urban planning, human geography, medicine and psychology (e.g. This provides converging evidence that increased cognitive demands posed by exposure to urban scenes can be measured with gait kinematics and reaction times even for short exposure times.Ī wide range of environmental factors such as microclimate, terrain, air and noise pollution have been shown to directly affect individuals' physical and mental well-being (for reviews see ). Shape discrimination was slower when urban scenes were presented, suggesting that it is harder to disengage attention from urban than from nature scenes. In Experiment 2, participants ( n = 45) performed a classic shape discrimination task with the same environmental scenes serving as task-irrelevant distractors. Gait changes correlated with subjective ratings of visual discomfort and their interaction with the environment but not with low-level image statistics. We teased apart factors that might contribute to cognitive load: image statistics and visual discomfort.
Gait speed and step length decreased for exposure to urban as compared with nature scenes in line with gait changes observed during verbal cognitive load tasks. In Experiment 1, participants ( n = 20) walked toward nature and urban images projected in front of them, one image per walk, and rated each image for visual discomfort.
Here, we explored the moment-to-moment impact of environment type on visual cognitive processing load, measuring gait kinematics and reaction times. Prolonged exposure to urban environments requires higher cognitive processing resources than exposure to nature environments, even if only visual cues are available.
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