Abstract
Stress during childhood can have mental and somatic health influences that track throughout life. Previous research attributes stress-reducing effects to natural environments, but has mainly focused on adults and often following leisurely relaxation in natural environments. This pilot study explores the impact of natural environments on stress response during rest and mental load and cognitive performance in 47 children aged 10–12 years in a school context. Heart rate variability measures indexing tonic, event, and phasic vagal tone and attention scores were compared across classroom and natural environments. Tonic vagal tone was higher in the natural environment than the classrooms, but no differences were found in event or phasic vagal tone or cognitive performance measures. These findings suggest a situational aspect of the conditions under which natural environments may give rise to stress-buffering influences. Further research is warranted to understand the potential benefits in a real-life context, in particular with respect to the underpinning mechanisms and effects of accumulated exposure over time in settings where children spend large proportions of time in natural environments.
Highlights
The World Health Organization estimated that more than half the global population in 2015 was living in urban environments, with an expected growth rate of approximately 1.84% per year between2015 and 2020 [1]
Our results suggest that the acute effects of the natural environment on the autonomic systems involved with stress processing are situation-dependent: it is during rest, that is, during break time or mental pauses, in which the influence of the natural environments ensues
The aim of our study was to investigate whether exposure to natural environments in a school setting was associated with reduced stress and improved cognitive performance in comparison to classroom environments
Summary
The World Health Organization estimated that more than half the global population in 2015 was living in urban environments, with an expected growth rate of approximately 1.84% per year between2015 and 2020 [1]. The World Health Organization estimated that more than half the global population in 2015 was living in urban environments, with an expected growth rate of approximately 1.84% per year between. Urban lifestyles have been found to encompass a set of adverse psychosocial and environmental influences that facilitate chronic stress [2]. Current urban living was observed to be associated with increased amygdala activity, indicative of stress experience, and urban upbringing with poorer social stress processing at a neural level [3]. A recent study found that remoteness to forests and urban green space amongst urban dwellers was associated with impaired amygdala integrity—a neural marker of stress coping [4]. Altered stress response related to urban environments may play an indirect role in the development or maintenance of mental health problems. Public Health 2018, 15, 1098; doi:10.3390/ijerph15061098 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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