Research on psychological restoration and restorative environments is a needed complement to work on stress and environmental stressors. Two laboratory experiments tested the utility of two restorative environments theories, one concerned with directed attention capacity renewal and the other with stress reduction and associated changes in emotion. Various strategies were employed to distinguish restorative effects from other effects, to limit the role of arousal reduction in attentional restoration, and to begin mapping the time course for the emergence of outcomes. Both experiments tested for differential emotional and performance effects as a function of photographic environmental simulation (natural or urban environment). Across the experiments the natural environment simulation engendered generally more positive emotional self-reports. That consistent performance effects were not found in either study suggests that attentional restoration as reflected in performance is a more time-intensive process.
A theory about the acquisition and use of cognitive maps of largescale everyday environments is presented. The basic assumptions of the theory are (1) people's behavior in social and physical environments is determined by action plans, and, if the execution of such action plans requires traveling, plans for how to travel, termed travel plans, are formed and executed; (2) the cognitive maps of large-scale and medium-scale environments acquired are adapted to facilitate movement and travel, and contain information about destinations for travel, spatial information, and travel instructions; (3) cognitive maps are initially acquired in connection with the formation of travel plans and, at the later stages of acquisition, the execution of travel plans (requiring active monitoring) constitutes a more important set of conditions for acquisition. The principles of internal representation of the cognitive map are also discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.