Cooper Rodriguez, Brittany Neilson, The Effect of Restorative Environments on Sustained Attention: A Replication and Extension of Berto (2005) Cooper Rodriguez, Brittany Neilson, & Martina Klein Texas Tech University 7/28/2016

Applied Sustained Attention Tasks A Sustained Attention Task is one that requires a person to detect if a critical signal is present over a prolonged period of time for example Baggage screening – the person is looking through bag after bag searching for hazardous objects Air traffic control – has to continually be paying attention to the incoming and outgoing flights and ensure everything is running smoothly So there is an entire body of literature that focuses on improving performance on sustained attention tasks http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2012/03/tsa-to-brief-industry-on-applying-new-x-ray-research-to-baggage-screening-at-airport-security-checkpoints.html http://jdasolutions.aero/blog/air-traffic-control-specialist-trainee/

Restorative Environments Having a restorative environment such as this where people can go on their breaks in order to escape the workplace can restore peoples attention. But Why? And what makes this natural environment restorative? http://popupcity.net/city-office-dominated-by-nature/

The Restorative Effect Nature Restoration Increased Attention (Berto, 2005) Reduced Stress (Ulrich et al., 1991) Improved Mood (Ulrich et al., 1991) Urban No Restoration First, I have to explain what this term restorative means. It stems from research on the restorative effect, which refers to an effect in which exposure to nature can increase attention, reduce stress, and improve mood, but this effect does not occur with urban environments. Importantly, the restorative effect is not limited to actual immersion in natural environments but can also be induced by viewing digital nature images.

The Restorative Effect Evolved preference for certain environments Nature grabs bottom-up attention Allows top-down attention to replenish Reduces need for attentional control Restores attentional fatigue, stress, and mood It it thought that there is an evolved preference for certain environments – those being nature. Because of this preference, nature grabs bottom-up attention – meaning nature innately grabs our attention without effort This allows our top-down attention to replenish because it reduces our need for attentional control (again grabbing our attention without effort) This all results in restored attentional fatigue, stress and mood (Kaplan, 1995; Kaplan & Berman, 2010)

Berto (2005) Aimed to determine if restorative images could improve attention performance on the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). 3 experiments Effect of restorative environments on attention Effect of geometric shapes on attention Effect of the length of exposure to the intervention One of the studies that supported the idea that nature frees up top-down attention and thus allowing it to restore was Berto (2005) Berto completed an experiment focusing on the effects of images, nature or urban, on sustained attention performance Completed 3 different experiments First looking at the restorative effect of nature compared to urban Second she introduced a control, which was geometric shapes Third she allowed participants to determine how long they viewed the images

Berto (2005) Experiment 1 Verify if restorative environments could improve performance on an attention task Finding: Nature improved reaction time, but no accuracy improvements were observed compared to urban. Used SART Reaction time was improved when participants were exposed to nature images compared to urban

Berto (2005) Experiment 2 Determine whether and how geometric shapes will effect performance Finding: Geometric shapes did not have any performance effects No effect on performance was found when participants viewed geometric shapes

Purpose of Present Study 1) Replicate & extend Berto (2005) Predictions (according to “restorative effect” of nature & Berto’s results): Nature images will have improved reaction time compared to urban and control images Statistical flaws, completed multiple t-test did not use an alpha correction to reduce an increase in family wise error – should have used ANOVA instead Determine if reaction time improvements due to the restorative effect or a chance effect Nature images will improve attention performance

Purpose of Present Study 2) Can we find the same restorative effects if we remove color from the image? Predictions (according to the “restorative effect” of nature): Original nature images will have the greatest restorative effect. Urban greyscale images will have the least restorative effect. Large body of research on the impact color may have on emotions and large inconsistencies within that body of research Interested in if and how this will effect attention performance If color is important to the restorative effect then we would expect original nature images will have the greatest effect and urban greyscale will have the least restorative effects

Research Question How will participants’ attention performance on the SART (Sustained Attention to Response Test) change if we grayscale images presented to participants? Will nature still have a restorative effect on attention performance? Will explain the SART more in depth later on

Method 74 participants (26 males and 48 females) between the ages of 18 and 27 ( M = 19.69, SD = 1.92) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions Urban original or greyscale Nature original or greyscale Control (geometric shapes) original or greyscale Data collection is on going but so far Participants were recruited from Introduction to Psychology courses

Method Urban Nature Control Examples of the images in each condition Same as those used in Berto (2005)

Method Procedure Informed Consent Pre-intervention Sustained Attention to Response Test (SART) Intervention (25 images) Post-intervention SART Our procedure SART – task completed on the computer requires participants to abstain from responding to the target, by hitting the space bar, which in this case is the number three while they rapidly respond to the non-targets which are all numbers 1-9 except for 3.. Done over a 4.3 min period Measuring: reaction time number of correct responses Intervention where they see images in either nature, urban, or geo in color or greyscale

Results Two one-way ANOVA was used to analyze differences in correct responses and total reaction time between pre- & post- intervention SART. Dependent Variable Difference Scores Independent Variable Statistical Test Correct Response SART 2 CR – SART 1 CR Picture Intervention ANOVA 1 Total Reaction Time (ms) SART 2 RT – SART 1 RT ANOVA 2 Two one-way ANOVAs were used to analyze differences in correct responses & total reaction time between pre- & post- intervention SART. So our dependent variables are correct responses and total reaction time in miliseconds and we found their difference scores by subtracting the first SART results from the second. Our independent variable for both is the picture intervention & I will refer to the correct response results as ANOVA 1 and total reaction time results as ANOVA 2 We plan to have more sophisticated data analyses when we publish these results, but for ease of understanding I am going to report on change scores for each of our dependent variables.

Results Goal #1: Assess if we can find the same results as Berto (2005) ANOVA 1: No significant findings occurred for correct response difference scores. Nature more accurate than urban but not significant Looking at our first goal we wanted to asses if we cold find the same results as Berto And what we found based on the correct response results the pattern of effect is there, nature did do better than the urban conditions if we just look at the means but it was not statistically significant

Total Correct Responses Results Total Correct Responses This graph shows the differences in correct responses between pre & post intervention SART Want CR to be positive = getting more correct answers

Total Correct Responses Results Total Correct Responses Looking at just the original images the overall trends are there Nature did better than the urban, which is what we are looking for

Total Correct Responses Results Total Correct Responses Control did improve maybe due to artistic nature of image potentially having a restorative effect which is not what Berto found Control greyscale seems to be acting as more of a control

Results Goal #1: Assess if we can find the same results as Berto (2005) ANOVA 2: A significant effect occurred for total reaction time difference scores, F = (5, 68) = 2.799, p = .023. Urban resulted in faster reaction time likely due to speed-accuracy trade off. Looking at the reaction time results urban did result in a faster reaction time but this is likely due to the speed-accuracy trade off. Participants who got more correct answers were slower.

Total Reaction Time (ms) Results Total Reaction Time (ms) This graph shows the differences in reaction time between pre & post intervention SART Below 0 they got faster above they got slower

Total Reaction Time (ms) Results Total Reaction Time (ms) Nature and control were slower but had more correct responses so there seems to be a speed-accuracy trade off Urban was faster but had less correct responses

Results Goal #2: Assess if we can find the same restorative effects of nature if we remove color from the image. Correct Response (ANOVA 1): greyscale less accurate than original for nature and control conditions, but not for urban. Our second goal was to find out if we remove color from images will the restorative effect still occur Looking at the correct response difference scores greyscale conditions were less accurate than the original for nature and control conditions but not for urban

Total Correct Responses Results Total Correct Responses You can see that nature greyscale is less correct than nature original and same for the control But this does not happen for urban greyscale they actually got slightly better

Results Goal #2: Assess if we can find the same restorative effects of nature if we remove color from the image. Reaction time (ANOVA 2): non-significant tendency for faster reaction time for greyscale compared to original across nature, urban, and control. The reaction time difference scores showed a non-significant tendency for faster reaction times for greyscale conditions compared to original across nature, urban, and control. Although these findings are not significant participants did not perform as well with greyscaled images compared to original images.

Total Reaction Time (ms) Results Total Reaction Time (ms) As you can see across all conditions the greyscale was faster than the original condition

Discussion Our study extending upon Berto (2005), at this point, partially replicated the restorative effect of nature. Nature (Original and Greyscale) images improves accuracy but results in slower performance (speed-accuracy tradeoff). Urban Original images result in worse accuracy but faster performance. Urban Greyscale images result in improved performance but not as good as Nature images. Our study has partially replicated the restorative effect of nature Nature images both original and greyscale improve accuracy but result in slower performance due to the speed-accuracy tradeoff Urban images results in worse accuracy but faster performance Urban greyscale images result in improved performance but not as good as nature images Data collection is on going so Practice effect? So many alpha corrections going on make it difficult to find significance.

Future Applications In order to avoid situations like these being able to know or detect when our attention is too fatigued is crucial https://www.pinterest.com/pin/483011128771348320/

Future Applications https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/office-design-technology-vs-nature-amy-hobrow Workplace environments and break areas such as these could be beneficial to allow for our attention to restore. Although more research is needed to determine the impact of color on restoration https://www.pinterest.com/pin/141159769548385482/

Urban Living This research is especially important because as … As we continue to urbanize having knowledge of how nature can improve our attention is important. UN predicts that by 2050 70% of the worlds population will live in an urban setting Not a lot of nature in these environments https://www.wired.com/2008/05/ff-heresies-01cities/

Future Applications Psychological detachment from work during leisure time = better on-the-job performance and greater satisfaction with lives (Sonnentag, 2012). Restorative environments may aid in achieving psychological detachment. From a human factors perspective, we care about this research because …. Employees who engage in psychological detachment from work during leisure time, meaning they do not think about job-related tasks while off-the-job, perform on-the-job better and are generally more satisfied with their lives. Restorative environments may aid in this psychological detachment; therefore, it is important to understand which types of environments result in maximum restoration.

Acknowledgments & References I would like to thank Dr. Klein, Brittany Neilson, and Alex Bukowski for their contributions to this project. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1559393 References Berto, R. (2005). Exposure to restorative environments helps restore attentional capacity. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25, 249-259. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2005.07.001 Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature – towards an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 169-182. doi:10.1016/0272-4944(95)90001-2 Sonnentag, S. (2012). Psychological detachment from work during leisure time: The benefits of mentally disengaging from work. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21, 114-118. doi: 10.1177/0963721411434979 Ulrich, R., Simons, R., Losito, B., Fiorito, E., Miles, M., & Zelson, M. (1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 11, 201-230. https://www.wired.com/2008/05/ff-heresies-01cities/

Questions? Composite score = average