Conceptual replication study and meta-analysis suggest simulated nature does not reliably restore pure executive attention measured by the attention network task

Abstract

The ability to replicate research findings is a cornerstone of science. Recent large-scale attempts to reproduce published psychology studies have resulted in replication of fewer than half of the statistically significant results (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). In this article, we present evidence of a failure to conceptually replicate a study published in Psychological Science (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008, Experiment 2). In their publication, Berman et al. (2008) reported that exposure to simulated natural settings restored executive attention as measured by the Attention Network Test in 12 young adults. In our article, we present a conceptual replication attempt with 31 young adults as well as meta-analytic evidence to show that simulated nature does not seem to reliably restore executive attention when combining evidence from 14 studies (N = 612) that also used the executive portion of the Attention Network Test. While simulated nature exposure may provide benefits for some cognitive tasks, our findings and those of other recent meta-analyses question the reliability of simulated nature settings to restore executive attention. We discuss suggestions for future research.