Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PSYNAT (The Psychological Benefits of Interacting with Nature)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-04-01 bis 2023-03-31
There is increasing scientific evidence that interacting with nature improves various aspects of cognition, such as working memory and attention, and boosts positive mood and feelings of emotional well-being. However, as more of the world is being (over-)developed, and natural resources are being used up at an alarming rate, humans’ exposure to nature is being threatened. With that comes potentially harmful effects on human cognition and mental health. In fact, rapid urbanization in the developing world has already resulted in an increase in the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders. This will likely only get worse with further urbanization and development. Thus, I proposed an ambitious research program that sought to investigate how nature exposure positively impacts cognition and emotion, and how lack of exposure may have negative long-term effects. The ultimate goal is that, through understanding the psychological mechanisms behind this phenomenon, we will be able to fully harness nature’s benefits and to forecast the negative impacts that further urbanization and indoor confinement may have on well-being. We can then use this knowledge to incorporate the important elements of nature in the design of new urban and indoor spaces, in order to minimize the negative impacts.
Over the past two years, I have worked on the proposed project and I do believe we are steps closer to understanding how and why nature is beneficial to our cognitive abilties, though this work will need to be continued for years to come in order to truly understand the nuances of the relationship between nature exposure and well-being.
Over the past two years, I have worked on the proposed project and I do believe we are steps closer to understanding how and why nature is beneficial to our cognitive abilties, though this work will need to be continued for years to come in order to truly understand the nuances of the relationship between nature exposure and well-being.
To test the cognitive benefits of nature, I began by downloading and preprocessing many 360-degree videos of nature and urban environments to use in the virtual reality (VR) study. While programming the VR study and dealing with delays in the shipment of equipment (i.e. the portable EEG headband), we decided to run a pilot study using images in a regular eye tracking study (rather than videos in a VR study). Results revealed a novel relationship between attentional focus and cognitive improvements. Namely, the cognitive benefits only occurred for those participants that were not too focused on the images they found aesthetically pleasing during the nature exposure phase. While we typically pay more attention to images/objects we like, nature may be beneficial because it can be enjoyed without requiring strong attentional focus, allowing for attention restoration to occur. I have recently (May 2023) presented this work at the annual meeting of the Vision Science Society (VSS) and am currently preparing the manuscript for submission. The full VR version of this study (using EEG and eye tracking) is ongoing, though I also already supervised a masters student in running a VR study exploring cognitive ability (i.e. performance on working memory and attention tasks) while in a virtual nature scene vs. a virtual city scene vs. a virtual indoor scene. Surprisingly, we did not find performance differences across these different environments, suggesting that a rest period may be necessary for experiencing the benefits of nature.
To test the effects of isolation from nature, I downloaded the images from the Aesthetic Visual Analysis (AVA) database, which includes thousands of images spanning a wide range of categories. To put a neural network "in lockdown", I implemented an existing neural network architecture using PyTorch and trained the network on only images labelled as "indoor". I also trained versions only on "landscape" (i.e. nature/outdoor) scenes, only on "urban" scenes, and a baseline version including all three scene types. We found that, compared to baseline, the "urban" and "indoor" networks resulted in lower aesthetic predictions on test images. In other words, these networks seemingly became "depressed" and did not enjoy nature images as much as the baseline network. The opposite was the case for the nature-only network. Overall, these results suggest a negative long-term effect of isolation from nature - namely, people would lose their ability to enjoy typically aesthetically pleasing environments, leading to an increase of depressive symptoms. I presented this work at the European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP) in Nijmegen Netherlands in August 2022. I am currently preparing the manuscript for submission. However, due to the quickly-evolving nature of the field of deep learning/AI, there are now better aesthetics neural networks and image databases available that I would like to use before finalizing the manuscript.
To test the effects of isolation from nature, I downloaded the images from the Aesthetic Visual Analysis (AVA) database, which includes thousands of images spanning a wide range of categories. To put a neural network "in lockdown", I implemented an existing neural network architecture using PyTorch and trained the network on only images labelled as "indoor". I also trained versions only on "landscape" (i.e. nature/outdoor) scenes, only on "urban" scenes, and a baseline version including all three scene types. We found that, compared to baseline, the "urban" and "indoor" networks resulted in lower aesthetic predictions on test images. In other words, these networks seemingly became "depressed" and did not enjoy nature images as much as the baseline network. The opposite was the case for the nature-only network. Overall, these results suggest a negative long-term effect of isolation from nature - namely, people would lose their ability to enjoy typically aesthetically pleasing environments, leading to an increase of depressive symptoms. I presented this work at the European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP) in Nijmegen Netherlands in August 2022. I am currently preparing the manuscript for submission. However, due to the quickly-evolving nature of the field of deep learning/AI, there are now better aesthetics neural networks and image databases available that I would like to use before finalizing the manuscript.
Thus far, the most prominent theory that attempts to explain why nature is beneficial to cognition is the Attention Restoration Theory (ART). The theory suggests that nature acts on the two forms of human attention. One is bottom-up attention, which is automatic and driven by the physical features of the environment. The other is top-down attention, which is a controlled form of attention, often required to achieve behavioural goals. The ART suggests that nature is able to capture bottom-up attention moderately – not boring but just enough to be interesting. At the same time, nature is processed fluently enough to not require controlled effort, giving the top-down attention system a chance to restore itself, improving cognition and mood. In other words, natural scenes trigger a form of attention that is undemanding or effortless, thus enabling people to rest and restore the more effortful forms of attention, resulting in a positive or pleasant experience. This form of attention is termed as "soft fascination". Conversely, urban scenes capture bottom-up attention dramatically, and additionally require vigilance and directed attention, consuming all available attentional resources and overwhelming the system, resulting in a negative experience.
However, the existing research had not clearly defined "soft fascination" or how/why nature captures attention “moderately”. Thus, we turned to theories of aesthetic pleasure. The Infovore Hypothesis posits that people enjoy seeking out information, and thus derive pleasure from scenes in which there is a great amount of novel and interpretable information to decipher. Similarly, within a predictive coding framework, the brain is constantly generating predictions about its environment, therefore we seek to gather new information to reduce prediction errors about the world. The Pleasure-Interest Model of Aesthetic Liking further theorizes that if there are no prediction errors (i.e. disfluency) to reduce, the resulting experience is boredom. The advantage of these aesthetic theories over the ART is that they explain how a scene can be described as simple but not boring, or interesting but not overwhelming (i.e. the “moderate” cases).
By researching the cognitive benefits of nature through the lens of aesthetics research, I was able to find a novel link between attentional focus and improvements on a working memory task. Here, I was able to show that "soft fascination" may represent a decoupling between attention and aesthetics. While we typically pay more attention to the things we like, I found that in order for an environment to be beneficial, it should be pleasant without capturing more attention.
However, the existing research had not clearly defined "soft fascination" or how/why nature captures attention “moderately”. Thus, we turned to theories of aesthetic pleasure. The Infovore Hypothesis posits that people enjoy seeking out information, and thus derive pleasure from scenes in which there is a great amount of novel and interpretable information to decipher. Similarly, within a predictive coding framework, the brain is constantly generating predictions about its environment, therefore we seek to gather new information to reduce prediction errors about the world. The Pleasure-Interest Model of Aesthetic Liking further theorizes that if there are no prediction errors (i.e. disfluency) to reduce, the resulting experience is boredom. The advantage of these aesthetic theories over the ART is that they explain how a scene can be described as simple but not boring, or interesting but not overwhelming (i.e. the “moderate” cases).
By researching the cognitive benefits of nature through the lens of aesthetics research, I was able to find a novel link between attentional focus and improvements on a working memory task. Here, I was able to show that "soft fascination" may represent a decoupling between attention and aesthetics. While we typically pay more attention to the things we like, I found that in order for an environment to be beneficial, it should be pleasant without capturing more attention.