Greenery versus Aquatic: Cognitive Restoration of Different Components of Nature for Improvement in Environmental Design

Abstract

Prior research has indicated that aquatic components (e.g., lakes, rivers) of a nature environment have been perceived to be more restorative than nature environments containing greenery components (e.g., trees, grass); this finding has been coined as the “dose effect of water.” However, the validity of this finding has been questioned as researchers have failed to generalize the dose effect of water to novel photos. Although subsequent research has been unable to generalize the dose effect of water to an individual’s perceived restoration, no studies have observed the cognitive restoration of different nature scenes using performance measures on a sustained attention task. The current study was conducted to determine if certain nature components lead to higher levels of cognitive restoration. Our results indicate there is not a certain nature component that leads to higher cognitive restoration via performance on a brief sustained attention task.