Restorative Effects of Observing Natural and Urban Scenery after Working Memory Depletion

Menno van Oordt, Kim Ouwehand and Fred Paas ()
Additional contact information
Menno van Oordt: Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Kim Ouwehand: Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Fred Paas: Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 20, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: According to attention restoration theory observing nature has restorative effects on cognitive components, such as working memory, after a cognitive depleting task. Additionally, urban environments are thought to have no effect or even a negative effect on cognitive restoration. Previous research has confirmed that observing actual, as well as digitally presented nature sceneries leads to more restoration of working memory capacity (WMC) than observing (digital) urban sceneries. To further investigate these findings, we conducted an experiment with 72 university students as participants. After a WMC depleting task, participants observed either digitally presented nature scenery, urban scenery or no scenery, and subsequently performed a digit span test, which was used to measure restoration of WMC. Results indicated significant higher performance on the digit span test for those who observed nature scenery in comparison to those who observed urban scenery or no scenery, thereby replicating results from previous research. Observing urban scenery was neither harmful nor helpful in terms of cognitive restoration compared to observing no scenery. These findings provide a foundation for implementing a brief intervention of observing nature in academic settings to facilitate the restoration of WMC.

Keywords: attention restoration theory (ART); working memory capacity (WMC); depletion; natural environments; urban environments; cognitive restoration; picture viewing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/188/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/188/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2022:i:1:p:188-:d:1012381

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().