Citizens, Environment and Safety, Institute of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7048 Trondheim, Norway.
Faculty of Health and Welfare Sciences, Østfold University College, 1757 Halden, Norway.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Sep 17;17(18):6792. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17186792.
Natural environments have been shown to trigger psychological and physiological restoration in humans. A new framework regarding natural environments restorative properties is proposed. Conditioned restoration theory builds on a classical conditioning paradigm, postulating the occurrence of four stages: (i) unconditioned restoration, unconditioned positive affective responses reliably occur in a given environment (such as in a natural setting); (ii) restorative conditioning, the positive affective responses become conditioned to the environment; (iii) conditioned restoration, subsequent exposure to the environment, in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus, retrieves the same positive affective responses; and (iv) stimulus generalization, subsequent exposure to associated environmental cues retrieves the same positive affective responses. The process, hypothetically not unique to natural environments, involve the well-documented phenomenon of conditioning, retrieval, and association and relies on evaluative conditioning, classical conditioning, core affect, and conscious expectancy. Empirical findings showing that restoration can occur in non-natural environments and through various sensory stimuli, as well as findings demonstrating that previous negative experience with nature can subsequently lower restorative effects, are also presented in support of the theory. In integration with other existing theories, the theory should prove to be a valuable framework for future research.
自然环境已被证明能触发人类的心理和生理恢复。本文提出了一个关于自然环境恢复力的新框架。条件性恢复理论基于经典条件作用范式，假设存在四个阶段：（i）非条件性恢复，无条件的积极情感反应可靠地发生在给定的环境中（如自然环境中）；（ii）恢复性条件作用，积极的情感反应与环境相关联；（iii）条件性恢复，随后暴露于环境中，即使没有无条件刺激，也能产生相同的积极情感反应；（iv）刺激泛化，随后暴露于相关的环境线索中，会产生相同的积极情感反应。该过程，假设并非自然环境所特有，涉及到有充分文献记录的条件作用、检索和联想现象，并依赖于评价性条件作用、经典条件作用、核心情感和意识期望。本文还提出了支持该理论的实证发现，即恢复不仅可以在非自然环境中发生，也可以通过各种感官刺激发生，而且之前对自然的负面体验也会降低恢复效果。与其他现有理论相结合，该理论应该可以成为未来研究的一个有价值的框架。
