After a recent post about using natural settings to help children with attention deficit disorder, several readers wrote in wondering whether many of us may be suffering from a “nature deficit.”
As it turns out, everyone appears to benefit from the restorative powers of nature. I recently spoke about “attention restoration theory” with Andrea Faber Taylor, a child environment and behavior researcher at the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As she explained, the human brain has two forms of attention: “directed” attention, which is what we use most of the time to concentrate on work, studies and tests, and “involuntary” attention, which is what occurs when we automatically respond to things like running water, crying babies or wild animals.
The problem is that directed attention is a finite resource — everyone has experienced the fatigue of taking a test or a big project at work. Attention restoration theory suggests that walks in nature and views of green space capture our involuntary attention, giving our directed attention a needed rest.
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