Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, Louv, Richard [best free novels txt] 📗

Subsequent research has supported the Kaplans’ attention-restoration theory. For example, Terry A. Hartig, an associate professor of applied psychology at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University in Gävle, Sweden, along with other researchers, compared three groups of backpacking enthusiasts; a group who went on a wilderness backpacking trip showed improved proofreading performance, while those who went on an urban vacation or took no vacation showed no improvement. In 2001, Hartig demonstrated that nature can help people recover from “normal psychological wear and tear”—but nature also improves the capacity to pay attention. Hartig emphasizes that he does not test the extremes—say, the Sierras versus East Los Angeles. Rather, his studies have focused on what he describes as “typical local conditions.” As described in Monitor on Psychology, Hartig asked participants to complete a forty-minute sequence of tasks designed to exhaust their directed-attention capacity. After the attention-fatiguing tasks, Hartig then randomly assigned participants to spend forty minutes “walking in a local nature preserve, walking in an urban area, or sitting quietly while reading magazines and listening to music,” the journal reported. “After this period, those who had walked in the nature preserve performed better than the other participants on a standard proofreading task. They also reported more positive emotions and less anger.”

Nature’s Ritalin

Attention-restoration theory applies to everyone, regardless of age. But what about children, especially those with ADHD?

“By bolstering children’s attention resources, green spaces may enable children to think more clearly and cope more effectively with life stress,” writes Nancy Wells, assistant professor at the New York State College of Human Ecology. In 2000, Wells conducted a study that found that being close to nature, in general, helps boost a child’s attention span. When children’s cognitive functioning was compared before and after they moved from poor- to better-quality housing adjacent to natural, green spaces, “profound differences emerged in their attention capacities even when the effects of the improved housing were taken into account,” according to Wells.

Swedish researchers compared children within two day-care settings: at one, the quiet play area was surrounded by tall buildings, with low plants and a brick path; at the other, the play area, based on an “outdoors in all weather” theme, was set in an orchard surrounded by pasture and woods and was adjacent to an overgrown garden with tall trees and rocks. The study revealed that children in the “green” day care, who played outside every day, regardless of weather, had better motor coordination and more ability to concentrate.

Some of the most important work in this area has been done at the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois. Andrea Faber Taylor, Frances Kuo, and William C. Sullivan have found that green outdoor spaces foster creative play, improve children’s access to positive adult interaction—and relieve the symptoms of attention-deficit disorders. The greener the setting, the more the relief. By comparison, activities indoors, such as watching TV, or outdoors in paved, non-green areas, increase these children’s symptoms.

In a survey of the families of ADHD children ages seven to twelve, parents or guardians were asked to identify after-school or weekend activities that left their child functioning especially well or particularly poorly. Activities were coded as “green” or “not green.” Green activities, for example, included camping and fishing. Not-green activities included watching television, playing video games, doing homework. Some activities, such as rollerblading, were labeled ambiguous. The controls in this study were more complex than space allows me to describe, but suffice it to say, the research team was careful to account for variables. They found that greenery in a child’s everyday environment, even views of green through a window, specifically reduces attention-deficit symptoms. While outdoor activities in general help, settings with trees and grass are the most beneficial. As they reported in the journal Environment and Behavior, “compared to the aftereffects of play in paved outdoor or indoor areas, activities in natural, green settings were far more likely to leave ADD children better able to focus, concentrate. Activities that left ADD children in worse shape were far more likely to occur indoors or outdoors in spaces devoid of greenery.”

They also found that the positive influence of near-home nature on concentration may be more pronounced for girls (ages six to nine) than for boys. On average, the greener a girl’s view from home, the better she concentrates, the less she acts impulsively, and the longer she can delay gratification. This helps her do better in school, handle peer pressure, and avoid dangerous, unhealthy, or problem behaviors. She is more likely to behave in ways that foster success in life, according to the researchers. Perhaps, if girls are less biologically prone to ADHD, as some mental health professionals believe, they may exhibit milder symptoms and may also have a more robust, healthy response to the treatment—whether pharmaceutical or green.

Based on the study, the University of Illinois issued this informal advice regarding girls to parents, caregivers, and others. The information also applies to boys:

• Encourage girls to study or play in rooms with a view of nature.

• Encourage children to play outdoors in green spaces, and advocate recess in green schoolyards. This may be especially helpful for renewing children’s concentration.

• Plant and care for trees and vegetation at your residence, or encourage the owner to do so.

• Value and care for the trees in your community. Caring for trees means caring for people.

In addition to its work in the housing projects of inner-city Chicago, the Human-Environment Research Laboratory has also examined nature’s impact on children with ADHD in middle-class settings. There, as in the public housing development, parents reported that their children exhibited fewer symptoms of ADHD after spending time in green surroundings. “You could say that the kids who had greener settings were just richer,” says Kuo. “But that doesn’t explain the fact that even rich kids do better after being in green settings. . . .” In the report:

Participants were asked if they