Exploring the restorative role of environments and their properties

Abstract

Attention can be classified into two groups: directed and involuntary attention. Directed attention requires mental exertion whereas involuntary attention is less effortful. Attention Restoration Theory (ART) posits that natural environments can provide cognitive restoration for mentally fatigued individuals due to its unique qualities that capture involuntary attention, giving directed attention facilities time to replenish. This study sought to extend the literature by examining if the auditory aspect of an environment can elicit restoration alone or only when both visual and audio aspects are presented. As such, I hypothesised that: (1) participants exposed to nature audio stimuli will outperform those exposed to urban audio stimuli (2) participants exposed to nature visual stimuli will outperform those exposed to urban visual stimuli and (3) participants exposed to nature audiovisual stimuli will outperform those exposed to urban audiovisual stimuli. A total of 77 participants completed two cognitive tasks: Attention Network Task (ANT) and Backward Digit Span (BDS) task. After that, they were exposed to either the control, nature audio, urban audio, nature visual, urban visual, nature audiovisual or urban audiovisual condition. They then completed another round of cognitive tasks to assess for any significant performance differences. Results indicated that while there were no overall significant interaction effects on ANT performance, there were significant interaction effects for visual and audiovisual conditions on BDS performance. This suggests that when presented with visual components of nature, individuals are able to restore their cognition. Recommendations for future research were also suggested.