FOCUS ON NATURE

A surprising (and easy) way to boost your attention span

- DANA G. SMITH

In 2008, 38 students at the University of Michigan in the US set out on a walk. Half of them wound their way through the trees in Ann Arbor’s Nichols Arboretum for 4.5km, while the other half navigated the same distance on the busy streets of downtown. A week later, the two groups swapped routes.

Both times before they set out, the students took a test that challenged their attention and working memory, where they were given progressively longer sequences of numbers that they had to repeat back in reverse order. When they returned to campus, the students took the test again. Walking through town improved their performance slightly, but walking in nature boosted scores by nearly 20%.

“You didn’t even need to like or enjoy the nature walk to get these cognitive benefits,” said Marc Berman, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, who conducted the study while he was a graduate student at Michigan. People who walked on a cold January day experienced just as much benefit as those who did the experiment in July.

The effect that nature has on our minds has been studied many times before and since, and the research generally — though not always — finds that exposure to green spaces boosts our cognition and creativity, not to mention our mood.

Many of us have experienced firsthand the natural world’s ability to revitalise us — a moment of clarity after summiting a mountain, or renewed focus following a lunchtime stroll in the park. Scientists are trying to understand exactly why that happens.