https://usir.salford.ac.uk/9497/1/Tzoulas_et_al_2007.pdf

Promoting ecosystem and human health in urban areas using Green Infrastructure: A literature review

Urbanization, resource exploitation, and lifestyle changes have diminished possibilities for human contact with nature in many societies. Concern about the loss has helped motivate research on the health benefits of contact with nature. Reviewing that research here, we focus on nature as represented by aspects of the physical environment relevant to planning, design, and policy measures that serve broad segments of urbanized societies. We discuss difficulties in defining “nature” and reasons for the current expansion of the research field, and we assess available reviews. We then consider research on pathways between nature and health involving air quality, physical activity, social cohesion, and stress reduction. Finally, we discuss methodological issues and priorities for future research. The extant research does describe an array of benefits of contact with nature, and evidence regarding some benefits is strong; however, some findings indicate caution is needed in applying beliefs about those benefits,...

Nature and Health

We compare the restorative effects on cognitive functioning of interactions with natural versus urban environments. Attention restoration theory (ART) provides an analysis of the kinds of environments that lead to improvements in directed-attention abilities. Nature, which is filled with intriguing stimuli, modestly grabs attention in a bottom-up fashion, allowing top-down directed-attention abilities a chance to replenish. Unlike natural environments, urban environments are filled with stimulation that captures attention dramatically and additionally requires directed attention (e.g., to avoid being hit by a car), making them less restorative. We present two experiments that show that walking in nature or viewing pictures of nature can improve directed-attention abilities as measured with a backwards digit-span task and the Attention Network Task, thus validating attention restoration theory.

/pdf/the-cognitive-benefits-of-interacting-with-nature-4xgxizjw13.pdf

The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature

Study objectives: To investigate the strength of the relation between the amount of green space in people's living environment and their perceived general health. This relation is analysed for different age and socioeconomic groups. Furthermore, it is analysed separately for urban and more rural areas, because the strength of the relation was expected to vary with urbanity. Design: The study includes 250 782 people registered with 104 general practices who filled in a self administered form on sociodemographic background and perceived general health. The percentage of green space (urban green space, agricultural space, natural green space) within a one kilometre and three kilometre radius around the postal code coordinates was calculated for each household. Methods: Multilevel logistic regression analyses were performed at three levels—that is, individual level, family level, and practice level—controlled for sociodemographic characteristics. Main results: The percentage of green space inside a one kilometre and a three kilometre radius had a significant relation to perceived general health. The relation was generally present at all degrees of urbanity. The overall relation is somewhat stronger for lower socioeconomic groups. Elderly, youth, and secondary educated people in large cities seem to benefit more from presence of green areas in their living environment than other groups in large cities. Conclusions: This research shows that the percentage of green space in people's living environment has a positive association with the perceived general health of residents. Green space seems to be more than just a luxury and consequently the development of green space should be allocated a more central position in spatial planning policy.

https://jech.bmj.com/content/jech/60/7/587.full.pdf

Green space, urbanity, and health: how strong is the relation?

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(08)61689-X.pdf

Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: an observational population study

Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings.

A group of 317 healthy participants between 54 and 99 years of age performed a verbal fluency task. The participants included Chinese, Hispanic, and Vietnamese immigrants, as well as White and African American English speakers. They were given 1 min to name as many animals as possible in their native language. The results showed that more animal names were produced by younger people and those with more education. Language background was also an important factor: The Vietnamese produced the most animal names and the Spanish speakers produced the fewest. The exaggerated difference between these two groups is attributed to the fact that Vietnamese animal names are short (predominantly 1 syllable) while the Spanish animal names are longer than any other language in this study (2 and 3 syllables per word). Finally, although the ethnic groups named different animals, and appeared to vary in the variety of animal names they used, these factors did not affect overall verbal fluency performance.

The effects of age, education, and ethnicity on verbal fluency.

The variability of practice hypothesis in motor learning: does it apply to Alzheimer's disease?

The Cross-Cultural Neuropsychological Test Battery (CCNB): Effects of age, education, ethnicity, and cognitive status on performance.

This study examined the acquisition, retention, and transfer of a gross motor skill, namely, tossing, in 84 moderate-to-severely demented patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and 72 healthy elderly controls. To identify optimal learning strategies, participants received 10 weeks of training under 1 of 5 practice conditions: constant, variable-parameter, variable-program, variable-combined, or no training. Constant practice was the only training condition that significantly enhanced learning and near transfer in AD patients. In comparison, all 4 types of training facilitated acquisition and near transfer in the healthy controls, with variable-combined practice being the most beneficial. The superiority of the variable practice conditions in the healthy controls supports both Schmidt’s (1975) variability of practice hypothesis and contextual interference theory. The inability of AD patients to benefit from variable forms of practice suggests that these impaired individuals may have difficulty accessing an...

Deborah S. Davis

Papers

Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings.

The effects of age, education, and ethnicity on verbal fluency.

The variability of practice hypothesis in motor learning: does it apply to Alzheimer's disease?

The Cross-Cultural Neuropsychological Test Battery (CCNB): Effects of age, education, ethnicity, and cognitive status on performance.

Contextual Interference and Motor Skill Learning in Alzheimer’s Disease