Psych 372 Environmental Psychology (13 nature)

8/11/2019 Psych 372 Environmental Psychology (13 nature)

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/psych-372-environmental-psychology-13-nature 1/36

Environmental psychology and naPsychology 372

http://www.qsensortech.com/resources/



Olmstead‟s Central Park: The lungs of the city





The broad strokes



Baltimore and Phoenix: A more nuanced story

• High canopy negatively correlates withcrime

• Low, dense bush positive correlation withcrime



Ulrich‟s study of hospital recovery and nature v





Picture proxy methods



Effects of nature/urban exposure on feelings



Environmental psychophysiology• How does where we are

influence how we feel?

– We can actually measure feelingwith simple sensors that detectmovement, heart rate, and skinconductance



Virtual nature



Psychophysiological measures



Restorative effects

Increase in positive affect Decrease in GSR



Why does nature restore us?

• Good vibrations (positive associations)

• Psycho-evolutionary accounts

• Attention restoration



Accounts based on positive associations

• There may be some merit to this

• Simple verbal descriptions of natureproduce some positive effects on mood



Psycho-evolutionary accounts: Orians & Heerw





People from a wide variety of backgrounds presavannah-like settings

• This seems true even if we are unlikely to have experienced them



Attention restoration theory

• Urban environments encourage focal attention

• Focal attention requires cognitive effort

• Natural settings produce „fascination‟ and release us from effortful attention



Patterns of eye movement

High fascination Low fascination





But there must be more to it….

• It doesn‟t seem plausible that simple release from cognitive effort is responsi

the positive effects of nature exposure

• Difficult to see follow-through from patterns of eye movements to shorter hos



Some have tried to figure out exactly what in nimages matters

Fractals – patterns of self-similarit-eg patterns preserved a



Fractal dimension is a mathematical measure similarity

• Fractal dimension of natural scenes is around 1.5

• Fractal dimensions of eye movements can also be measured – also around 1



Another way of looking at visual perception

• There are no identified “fractal

detectors”

• But there are “spatial frequencydetectors”

• -any visual image is composed ofinformation at a range of scales

• Our visual system is more sensitive to

some than to others• Different parts of our brain are more or

less sensitive to particular ranges ofspatial frequency























The summary

• Exposure to nature has many benefits

• Several theories try to account for these effects

• We may be at least zero-ing in on parts of the mechanism for this effect

• If current findings hold up, it suggests that all kinds of designs (and not just nmight be good for body and mind

Documents

Psych 372 Environmental Psychology (13 nature)