Abstract
Prolonged exposure to urban environments requires higher cognitive processing resources than exposure to nature environments, even if only visual cues are available. Here, we explored the moment-to-moment impact of environment type on visual cognitive processing load, measuring gait kinematics and reaction times. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 20) walked toward nature and urban images projected in front of them, one image per walk, and rated each image for visual discomfort. Gait speed and step length decreased for exposure to urban as compared with nature scenes in line with gait changes observed during verbal cognitive load tasks. We teased apart factors that might contribute to cognitive load: image statistics and visual discomfort. Gait changes correlated with subjective ratings of visual discomfort and their interaction with the environment but not with low-level image statistics. In Experiment 2, participants (n = 45) performed a classic shape discrimination task with the same environmental scenes serving as task-irrelevant distractors. Shape discrimination was slower when urban scenes were presented, suggesting that it is harder to disengage attention from urban than from nature scenes. This provides converging evidence that increased cognitive demands posed by exposure to urban scenes can be measured with gait kinematics and reaction times even for short exposure times.
Highlights
Prolonged exposure to urban environments requires higher cognitive processing resources than exposure to nature environments, even if only visual cues are available
In line with the hypothesis that images of urban environments capture attention more readily than nature images and are more difficult to disengage from [21], our results revealed that participants were slower in taking a simple shape discrimination decision when exposed simultaneously to distracting urban images as compared with nature images
This effect was pronounced for both upright and inverted images, suggesting that at least some low-level basic image statistics might contribute to this effect and not just higher cognitive processes evoked by the meaning of the images
Summary
Prolonged exposure to urban environments requires higher cognitive processing resources than exposure to nature environments, even if only visual cues are available. That at least some of the beneficial effects of exposure to nature are not driven by cleaner air or reduced auditory noise but by the visual aspects of the environment is suggested by findings that even exposure to images of nature scenes leads to a measurable improvement in post-exposure attention and memory performance compared with exposure to images of urban scenes [20,21] This leads to the central issue in our study: if cognitive benefits can be observed after sustained exposure to nature versus urban scenes [20,21], theoretically, such effects should be observable in real-time measures. The link between perceptual load and gait has been little investigated so far (but see [24,27,28,29]), but the high reliance of walking on sensory (in particular, visual) input should be sensitive to environmentally induced cognitive load
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