Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

How does Psychological Restoration Work in Children? An Exploratory Study

Rita Berto^1*, Margherita Pasini¹ and Giuseppe Barbiero^2,3

¹Dipartimento di Filosofia, Pedagogia e Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Verona, Verona, Italy

²Laboratorio di Ecologia Affettiva, Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali, Università della Valle d’Aosta, Aosta, Italy

³IRIS – Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Sustainability, Torino, Italy

*Corresponding Author:

Rita Berto
Dipartimento di Filosofia
Pedagogia e Psicologia
Università degli Studi di Verona
Verona, Italy
Tel: +39 339 6402891
E-mail: rita.berto@hotmail.it

Received Date: March 06, 2015; Accepted Date: April 11, 2015; Published Date: April 15, 2015

Citation: Berto R, Pasini M, Barbiero G (2015) How does Psychological Restoration Work in Children? An Exploratory Study. J Child Adolesc Behav 3:200. doi:10.4172/2375-4494.1000200

Copyright: © 2015 Berto R, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

This study investigates three issues concerned with psychological restoration in children, specifically whether children perceive the difference between the restorative value of a natural and a built environment; whether the perception of restorativeness affects children’s attentional performance; how children feel to be connected with Nature. To this aim, 48 children age 9-11 years participated in a within-subjects study; children filled in the Perceived Restorativeness Scale-children (environmental preference included) and the Connectedness to Nature Scalechildren, and performed the Continuous Performance Test in three different conditions: 1-in the classroom after the practice of Mindful Silence; 2-in the school playground after the school break; 3-in an alpine wood after a walk. In addition to the self-report assessments and the measurement of attentional performance, the children’s physiological condition was assessed by measuring some basic physiological parameters. From results it emerges that though children’s connection to Nature doesn’t vary among conditions, they can discriminate among environments with different degree of restorativeness (assessments were made on setting characteristics and activities), and the perception of restorativeness keeps pace with the performance at the attention test and the preference evaluation. Results are in agreement with Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory (1995) and the fascination/meditation hypothesis (Kaplan, 2001).

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