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Nurtured by nature

UW study suggests there is no substitute for the real thing

By Erik Robinson
Published: March 25, 2010, 12:00am

Imagine you work in an office with a window looking out on a tree-covered park complete with a bubbling fountain and a wide expanse of lawn.

Now, put the same image in an adjoining office on a high-definition television.

Intuitively, most people would prefer the window. And most would prefer the plasma screen to an office with a blank wall. But is there a measurable difference in the stress level of workers in an office setting with a window, with a plasma-screen image, or with a blank wall?

Researchers at the University of Washington decided to find out.

Ninety participants, in three groups of 30 each, gathered in the three different office settings and were given detail-oriented tasks such as proofreading. Afterward, researchers measured the heart rate of each participant. Perhaps not surprisingly, the heart rate of workers in the windowed office decreased more rapidly than the other two groups.

“There’s quite a bit of research across various areas in psychology (showing) there are psychological benefits to having interactions in nature,” researcher Rachel Severson said.

But what about the benefits of a live-action representation of nature?

The researchers found no difference in restored heart rate between participants working in the office with unadorned walls and those with the live-action plasma-screen image of the park scene — actually, Drumheller Fountain in the center of the UW’s campus in Seattle.

“In fact, it was no different than the blank wall,” said Severson said.

Technological stand-ins for nature are no substitute for the real thing, according to the conclusion of the study authored last year in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science by Severson, UW developmental psychologist Peter Kahn and graduate student Jolina Ruckert.

Severson believes the research illustrates a growing hazard as people become increasingly disconnected from the natural environment.

“Your grandparents grew up in a very different world,” she said. “The pace of technological development has just been incredible. You can’t even imagine now not having the Internet or not having a cell phone, whereas 20 years ago that wasn’t the case.”

In Clark County, the Parks Foundation is launching a Nature Play Initiative to promote the physical, emotional, social and cognitive benefits of connecting children with nature. The initiative will officially kick off June 22 with a keynote speech by Richard Louv, author of the “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

‘Substitute … nature’

However, not everyone gets an office with a window or a subdivision next to a forest.

In a separate study, UW researchers found that a plasma screen image can have some benefit if the real deal isn’t within sight.

They installed a 50-inch plasma screen with real-time images of Drumheller Fountain in the windowless offices of seven UW faculty members. Over 16 weeks, researchers found the participants benefitted in terms of psychological well-being, cognitive functioning and connection to the natural world.

“At first glance, such a finding would speak to how we can improve human life: When actual nature is not available, substitute technological nature,” the researchers wrote. “But such substitutions contribute to an insidious problem.”

The researchers described a kind of downward spiral: As people come to rely to a greater extent on technological substitutes for nature, we lose our appreciation of real nature. Whether it’s deteriorating air quality or the loss of natural habitat, each succeeding generation accepts a degraded state of the environment as a normal part of the baseline.

“We don’t have any sense what a wild Columbia River was,” Severson said. “We don’t recognize there has been a loss.”

So we turn to whiz-bang technological substitutes, which stresses us out — whether we’re aware of it or not.

“We as a species will adapt to the loss of actual nature. How could we not? We either adapt or go extinct,” the UW researchers wrote. “But because of biophilia — because of our evolutionary need to affiliate with nature —we will suffer physical and psychological costs.”

Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551, or erik.robinson@columbian.com.

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