Nature benefits revisited: Differences in gait kinematics between nature and urban images disappear when image types are controlled for likeability.

Exposure to urban environments requires more cognitive processing than exposure to nature; an effect that can even be measured analysing gait kinematics whilst people walk towards photographic images. Here, we investigated whether differences in cognitive load between nature and urban scenes are sti...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Daria Burtan, Jeremy F Burn, Ute Leonards
Format: article
Langue:EN
Publié: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Sujets:
R
Q
Accès en ligne:https://doaj.org/article/ce1c6ccc8047465bb6e8b20aa0f97fb0
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
Description
Résumé:Exposure to urban environments requires more cognitive processing than exposure to nature; an effect that can even be measured analysing gait kinematics whilst people walk towards photographic images. Here, we investigated whether differences in cognitive load between nature and urban scenes are still present when scenes are matched for their liking scores. Participants were exposed to images of nature and urban scenes that had been matched a priori for their liking scores by an independent participant sample (n = 300). Participants (N = 44) were either asked to memorise each image during walking or to rate each image for its visual discomfort after each walk. Irrespective of experimental task, liking score but not environment type predicted gait velocity. Moreover, subjective visual discomfort was predictive of gait velocity. The positive impact of nature described in the literature thus might, at least in part, be due to people's aesthetic preferences for nature images.