ation of their attention, providing a “user-friendly,” effective, yet economical resource to support children’s development and overall life effectiveness.
Two of the key journals for person-environment researchers have dedicated special issues to environments that facilitate the restoration of attentional capacity (Journal of Environmental Psychology 23(2), 2003 and Environment and Behavior 33(4), 2001). Noticeably absent from both issues, however, was work involving children. Although an argument exists for initially establishing outcomes with one sample only (i.e., adults), this approach results in research with children being delayed, or even disregarded. The aim of this paper is to make a step towards addressing such a delay.
Although research with adults and restorative environments has been dominant (e.g., Hartig, Mang, and Evans 1991; Herzog and Gale 1996; Kaplan 2001a; Korpela, Hartig, Kaiser, and Fuhrer 2001; Kuo and Sullivan 2001), a number of studies have examined the relationship between different types of environments, typically varying in levels of natural elements (e.g., trees and grassy spaces), and children’s attentional capacity (Faber Taylor, Kuo, and Sullivan 2001; Grahn, Martensson, Lindblad, Nilsson, and Elkman 1997; Wells 2000). Some of these studies have drawn on Attention Restoration Theory (ART) (Kaplan 1995; Kaplan and Kaplan 1989) to explain their findings. They reported restoration of attention; however, they did not include an assessment of the level of restorative components within the environments.
Establishing the relationships between the perceived restorative potential in environments, the experience of attention restoration and environmental elements including levels of nature, requires a valid measure of the restorative components for children. To date, this has not been considered in the literature and is the goal of this study. This paper outlines ART, reviews each of the proposed components of restorative environments, touches on measures developed for adults and then reports the development and evaluation of a perceived restorative components scale for children.
Attention Restoration TheoryThe capacity to direct attention (CDA) is a crucial component in the performance of specific everyday tasks as well as in overall life effectiveness for both adults and children (Driver 2001; Kuo 2001; Kuo and Sullivan 2001; Piontkowski and Calfee 1979; Rockstroh and Schweizer 2001; Ruff and Rothbart 1996; Wells and Matthews 1994). For example, children with severe attentional deficits (e.g., Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD) as well as those with less attentional capacity loss demonstrate reduced effectiveness in both academic performance and interpersonal relationships. For all individuals, CDA inhibits distracting, irrelevant stimuli while allowing appropriate information to be extracted from the environment. As CDA requires effort, however, the ability to continue directing attention can be diminished. This reduces the efficacy of the inhibitory mechanism for irrelevant stimuli, in turn resulting in reduced effectiveness. For example, attentionally fatigued individuals (both adults and children) may experience irritability, difficulty with concentrating, problem solving or planning (Kaplan 1995). The restoration of attentional capacity is therefore crucial for both adults and children alike.
Drawing on James' (1950) distinction between “voluntary attention” (i.e., requires effort) and “involuntary attention” (i.e., effortless), Kaplan’s (1995) ART is based on direct and indirect attention respectively (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989; Kaplan 1995). Direct attention, like voluntary attention, requires effort to maintain. As such, the ability to maintain the effort of directing attention can be weakened, which is experienced as directed attention fatigue (DAF). Conversely, indirect attention is effortless. As the two types of attention are experienced one at one time, ART proposes that involuntary or indirect attention leads to the restoration of directed attention. Different environments vary in th