Abstract
The number of students affected by exam anxiety continues to rise. Therefore, it is becoming progressively relevant to explore innovative remediation strategies that will help mitigate the debilitating effects of exam anxiety. The study aimed to investigate whether green environment exposure, delivered by virtual reality (VR) technology, would serve as an effective intervention to mitigate participants’ test anxiety and therefore improve the experience of the exam, measured by positive and negative affect, and increase test scores in a pseudo exam. Twenty high and twenty low exam anxiety students completed a pseudo exam before and after being exposed to either a simulated green environment or urban environment. Only those who had high anxiety and were exposed to the nature VR intervention had significant reductions in negative affect (F(1, 31) = 5.86, p = 0.02, ηp2 = 0.15), supporting the idea that exposure to nature, even if simulated, may benefit students’ feelings about their academic performance. The findings are discussed in light of future developments in nature and educational research.
Highlights
An extensive body of literature asserts that exposure to green environments can help combat attentional fatigue, cognitive overload and alleviate stress [1] due to their restorative properties [2].The term ‘green environments’ denotes any area of nature consisting of vegetated regions such as parks, forests and open landscapes [1]
The present study aims to investigate whether one stint of nature exposure through immersive virtual reality (IVR) can improve the experience of the test and test performance in individuals with test anxiety
To accommodate for this, a factorial ANOVA was performed on adjusted baseline scores for negative affect [(NA Time 1–NA Time 2)/NA 1]
Summary
An extensive body of literature asserts that exposure to green environments can help combat attentional fatigue, cognitive overload and alleviate stress [1] due to their restorative properties [2].The term ‘green environments’ denotes any area of nature consisting of vegetated regions such as parks, forests and open landscapes [1]. An extensive body of literature asserts that exposure to green environments can help combat attentional fatigue, cognitive overload and alleviate stress [1] due to their restorative properties [2]. Namely attention restoration theory (ART) [3,4] and stress recovery theory (SRT) [5] are proposed to explain the restorative mechanisms behind green environments. ART asserts that green environments elicit an alternative form of effortless attention within individuals, described as ‘soft fascination,’ i.e., the effortless exploration of an interesting but not attentionally demanding environment [3]. Green environments evoke a sense of ‘being away’ from attentional demands, feelings of extent
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