Johnson Katherine A, Pontvianne Annabelle, Ly Vi, Jin Rui, Januar Jonathan Haris, Machida Keitaro, Sargent Leisa D, Lee Kate E, Williams Nicholas S G, Williams Kathryn J H
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia.
UNSW Business School, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 25;13:809629. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.809629. eCollection 2022.
Attention Restoration Theory proposes that exposure to natural environments helps to restore attention. For sustained attention-the ongoing application of focus to a task, the effect appears to be modest, and the underlying mechanisms of attention restoration remain unclear. Exposure to nature may improve attention performance through many means: modulation of alertness and one's connection to nature were investigated here, in two separate studies. In both studies, participants performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) before and immediately after viewing a meadow, ocean, or urban image for 40 s, and then completed the Perceived Restorativeness Scale. In Study 1 ( = 68), an eye-tracker recorded the participants' tonic pupil diameter during the SARTs, providing a measure of alertness. In Study 2 ( = 186), the effects of connectedness to nature on SART performance and perceived restoration were studied. In both studies, the image viewed was not associated with participants' sustained attention performance; both nature images were perceived as equally restorative, and more restorative than the urban image. The image viewed was not associated with changes in alertness. Connectedness to nature was not associated with sustained attention performance, but it did moderate the relation between viewing the natural images and perceived restorativeness; participants reporting a higher connection to nature also reported feeling more restored after viewing the nature, but not the urban, images. Dissociation was found between the physiological and behavioral measures and the perceived restorativeness of the images. The results suggest that restoration associated with nature exposure is not associated with modulation of alertness but is associated with connectedness with nature.
注意力恢复理论认为，接触自然环境有助于恢复注意力。对于持续注意力——即持续将注意力集中于一项任务，其效果似乎并不显著，而且注意力恢复的潜在机制仍不清楚。接触自然可能通过多种方式提高注意力表现：本研究通过两项独立研究，分别探讨了警觉性调节以及人与大自然的联系。在两项研究中，参与者在观看草地、海洋或城市图像40秒之前和之后立即执行持续注意力反应任务（SART），然后完成感知恢复量表。在研究1（n = 68）中，眼动仪记录了参与者在执行SART任务期间的静息瞳孔直径，以此作为警觉性的指标。在研究2（n = 186）中，研究了与大自然的联系对SART表现和感知恢复的影响。在两项研究中，观看的图像均与参与者的持续注意力表现无关；两种自然图像都被认为具有同样的恢复效果，且比城市图像更具恢复性。观看的图像与警觉性变化无关。与大自然的联系与持续注意力表现无关，但它确实调节了观看自然图像与感知恢复之间的关系；报告与大自然联系更紧密的参与者在观看自然图像而非城市图像后，也报告感觉恢复得更好。研究发现，生理和行为指标与图像的感知恢复性之间存在分离。结果表明，与接触自然相关的恢复作用与警觉性调节无关，而是与与大自然的联系有关。
