The Differential Impact of Mystery in Nature on Attention: An Oculometric Study

Abstract

Nature exposure can provide benefits on stress, health and cognitive performance. According to Attention Restoration Theory (ART), the positive impact of nature on cognition is mainly driven by fascination. Fascinating properties of nature such as water or a winding hiking trail may capture involuntary attention, allowing the directed form of attention to rest and to recover. This claim has been supported by studies relying on eye-tracking measures of attention deployment, comparing exposure to urban and nature settings. Yet, recent studies have shown that promoting higher engagement with a nature setting can improve restorative benefits, hence challenging ART’s view that voluntary attention is resting. Besides, recent evidence published by Szolosi et al. (2014) suggests that voluntary attention may be involved during exposure to high-mystery nature images which they showed as having greater potential for attention restoration. The current study explored how exposure to nature images of different scenic qualities in mystery (and restoration potential) could impact the engagement of attention. To do so, participants were shown nature images characterized by either low or high mystery properties (with allegedly low or high restoration potential, respectively) and were asked to evaluate their fascination and aesthetic levels. Concurrently, an eye tracker collected measures of pupil size, fixations and spontaneous blinks as indices of attentional engagement. Results showed that high-mystery nature images had higher engagement than low-mystery images as supported by the larger pupil dilations, the higher number of fixations and the reduced number of blinks and durations of fixations. Taken together, these results challenge ART’s view that directed attention is merely resting during exposure to restorative nature and offer new hypotheses on potential mechanisms underlying attention restoration.

Water and Meadow Views Both Afford Perceived but Not Performance-Based Attention Restoration: Results From Two Experimental Studies

“…To date this is the first study to use pupillometry during a sustained attention task to test the immediate effects of viewing a nature image. The three other studies using pupillometry measured pupil diameter as participants viewed photos of different forms of nature, finding opposite effects ( Nordh et al, 2010 ; Martínez-Soto et al, 2019 ; Marois et al, 2021 ). Here, the participants showed physiological and behavioral evidence of fatigue during both the baseline and post-intervention SARTs, and reported feeling sleepier after completing both SARTs, but with no relief proffered by viewing the nature images for the 40 s period tested here.…”

“…Three studies to date have examined the associations between nature images and pupil diameter; participants viewed photographs rated either high or low in restorative value ( Nordh et al, 2010 ; Martínez-Soto et al, 2019 ; Marois et al, 2021 ). Nordh and colleagues noted that pupil size was smaller when participants viewed park photos they rated as more restorative.…”

“…Martínez-Soto and colleagues interpreted these results within the context of the emotional valence of the photos, suggesting that a greater emotional response associated with higher restorative ratings of the photos was associated with a larger pupil size ( Martínez-Soto et al, 2019 ). Marois and colleagues suggested that the nature images with higher restoration potential, the high-mystery images, may have prompter greater engagement of attention with the natural images ( Marois et al, 2021 ). In the current study pupil diameter was used as a measure of alertness during a sustained attention task to investigate if exposure to nature was associated with sustained attention performance and modulation of alertness.…”

The Impact of Nature Imagery and Mystery on Attention Restoration

“…Hence, images depicting settings high in mystery usually include soft fascination. Through a novel oculometric methodology to explore engagement with environments depicted in images, Marois et al [33] proposed that it is the voluntary engagement with mystery and soft-fascination components of nature that helps bring about restoration by reducing cognitive demand.…”

A Toolkit of Biophilic Interventions for Existing Schools to Enhance Student and Faculty Health and Performance

“…In order to quantify the connection between the biophilic design strategies and their impact on student and teacher performance, a thorough literature review identifying the relevant benefits of specific biophilic retrofit strategies to humans was completed and captured on the back of each strategy card. The studies found significant connections between biophilic design elements and human health and productivity outcomes, including anxiety and stress [24][25][26], attention [27][28][29][30], cognitive function [12,13,19,31], engagement (in class) [32], graduation rates [33], physical health [15,[34][35][36][37], standardized test scores [18,[38][39][40][41], systems thinking [42], teamwork [43], and thermal comfort [44].…”