According to Attention Restoration Theory (ART), a walk in nature can restore our ability to direct our attention. Directed attention is a finite and depletable resource, and must be replenished after much use. Important to good performance and relationships, it probably plays a significant role in self-regulation, information processing, and executive function. (Click for more about ART in an earlier post.)
Authors of "Directed Attention as a Common Resource for Executive Functioning and Self-Regulation" (Perspectives on Psychological Science) take a look at directed attention and ART in their article. If you are interested in these topics, I recommend the article as it gives a good overview and is easy to understand.
The authors hypothesize that sleep and meditation also can restore directed attention. And they say that television is probably not restorative. For more on TV, read the section of the article titled Television: A Popular Self-Distraction Device.
From the article (footnotes left out):
ART has proposed a potential approach to facilitating recovery. It is based on the simple premise that directed attention might be more likely to recover if it is allowed to rest. There would appear to be three primary means of helping such rest occur. One could sleep (although the body only seems to put up with a certain amount of sleep). One could meditate, which does appear to be effective, although it takes knowledge and skill—and a bit of patience. The third means would be to utilize involuntary attention so as to not utilize directed attention. This idea is consistent with Bargh and
That is, the requirement for directed attention in such environments is minimized, and attention is typically captured in a bottom-up fashion by features of the environment itself. Crucially, in ART, such bottom-up attention needs to be sufficiently gentle so as not to interfere with other thoughts and is referred to as soft fascination. Natural environments, such as parks, gardens, and lakefronts, are able to capture involuntary attention without monopolizing attentional channel capacity. At the same time, the requirements to direct attention are minimized. It is therefore hypothesized that after an interaction with natural environments, one is able to perform better on tasks that depend on directed attention abilities. Natural environments are certainly not the only environments capable of attracting involuntary attention without interfering with other thoughts, but do serve as good candidate environments that have been shown to restore directed attention abilities across a wide array of populations and situations.
Unlike natural environments, urban environments tend to be poor environments for restoring directed attention. ...
When was the last time you were in a natural environment?
Note: Click to read a related article "The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature" (Psychological Science) [pdf].
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