Evaluating visual and auditory contributions to the cognitive restoration effect

Abstract

It has been suggested that certain real-world environments can have a restorative effect on an individual, as expressed in changes in cognitive performance and mood. Much of this research builds on Attention Restoration Theory (ART), which suggests that environments that have certain characteristics induce cognitive restoration via variations in attentional demands. Specifically, natural environments that require little top-down processing have a positive effect on cognitive performance, while city-like environments show no effect. We characterized the cognitive restoration effect further by examining (1) whether natural visual stimuli, such as blue spaces, were more likely to provide a restorative effect over urban visual stimuli, (2) if increasing immersion with environment-related sound produces a similar or superior effect, (3) if this effect extends to other cognitive tasks, such as the functional field of view (FFOV), and (4) if we could better understand this effect by providing controls beyond previous works. We had 202 participants complete a cognitive task battery, consisting of a reverse digit span task, the attention network task, and the FFOV task prior to and immediately after a restoration period. In the restoration period, participants were assigned to one of seven conditions in which they listened to natural or urban sounds, watched images of natural or urban environments, or a combination of both. Additionally, some participants were in a control group with exposure to neither picture nor sound. While we found some indication of practice effects, there were no differential effects of restoration observed in any of our cognitive tasks, regardless of condition. We did, however, find evidence that our nature images and sounds were more relaxing than their urban counterparts. Overall, our findings suggest that acute exposure to relaxing pictorial and auditory stimulus is insufficient to induce improvements in cognitive performance.

Of cricket chirps and car horns: The effect of nature sounds on cognitive performance

“…Cognitive Directed attention was operationalized through the construction of a composite cognitive measure, consisting of both the dual n-back (DNB) task and the BDS task. The BDS has been a common assessment of directed attention within the ART literature (e.g., Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008;Emfield & Neider, 2014); thus, the selection of BDS was largely motivated by these prior reports. DNB has not been previously administered in the context of ART, yet it was selected because it also places demands on directed attention (see Lilienthal, Tamez, Shelton, Myerson, & Hale, 2013) and shares variance with BDS (see Redick & Lindsey, 2013)ostensibly because both tasks place demands on directed attention.…”

“…The BDS consisted of 14 trials, similar to Berman et al (2008Berman et al ( , 2012 and Emfield and Neider (2014). The task was non-adaptive, in that the digit span was not increased or decreased based on participant performance.…”

“…However, prior research has not found convincing evidence for the benefits of natural sounds on the functioning of directed attention. Emfield and Neider (2014) assessed how nature interventions improved performance on directed attention tasks. The authors found an improvement from pre-to post-intervention (i.e., a practice effect), but no nature-related performance advantage relative to urban stimuli.…”

Psychological Restoration Can Depend on Stimulus-Source Attribution: A Challenge for the Evolutionary Account?

“…For example, participants who look at a green rooftop for 40 s during the break appear to be more mentally restored than participants who look at a bare concrete roof, as found both in subjective ratings and an increase in test performance after the break (Lee et al, 2015). It should be noted though, that the restorative effects of nature exposure on subjective ratings appear to be more easily replicated than the effect on cognitive performance (Bergman et al, 2008; Emfield and Neider, 2014). …”

“…Auditory stimuli and visual stimuli, for example, can both have restorative effects even though they have different stimulus features. For instance, sound that originates from a nature source (Ratcliffe et al, 2013; Benfield et al, 2014; Emfield and Neider, 2014; Jahncke et al, 2015) has been shown to help restore mental fatigue to a greater extent than exposure to noise (e.g., ventilation noise; Alvarsson et al, 2010) and, similarly, natural sceneries are more restorative than scenes of built environments (Berto, 2005; Lee et al, 2015). Hence, stimuli with clearly different physical characteristics (pictures vs. sound) can have similar restorative effects.…”