Research Design Connection: Nature and Mental Refreshment

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | March 9th, 2020

Crossan and Salmoni’s work confirms previous studies that have determined that nature experiences are mentally refreshing. The research team reports that “Attention Restoration Theory” (ART) predicts that top-down processing during everyday activities can cause attentional fatigue and that bottom-up processing that occurs when people experience nature will be restorative. This study exposed participants to three different conditions…: a control condition during which participants walked on a typical treadmill; a nature condition during which participants walked on the same treadmill, experiencing a simulated nature walk; and a perturbation condition that included the same simulated nature scene but also required top-down processing during the walk. The findings supported ART predictions…top-down processing [note the description of this sort of mental work, above] in a simulated natural environment nullified the restorative effects and the nature condition produced a significant improvement in directed attention performance compared to the control and perturbation conditions after a 10-min …