1. Introduction
The benefits of viewing natural scenes have been proved for decades (Ulrich, 1984; Parsons, 1991; Laumann, 2001). The theory, attention restoration theory (ART), attempting to explain these effects was provided by Kaplan and Kaplan (1989). van den Berga et al. (2003) pointed three basic conditions to qualify the restorative potential: relation between type of environment and preference, relation between type of environment and restorative potential, and restorative potential and preference.
In recent years, there were two types of researches relative to directed attention. First, researchers targeted the fatigue and the recovery of directed attention. There have been many ways to measure the directed attention or its fatigue. In other words, these researchers monitored how directed attention changes after some stimuli, like a short film with natural scenes. For instance, Hartig et al. (2003) applied Necker Cube Pattern Control (NCPC) task and
memory-loaded search task to measure 112 students’ attention. van den Berga et al. (2003) measured participants’ attention with d2 Metal Concentration Test after they viewed a series of videos. There were also the other indices to evaluate participants’ psychophysiological responses, such as inter-beat interval, IBI (Laumann et al., 2003), or blood pressure, BP (Hartig et al., 2003). According relative researches, some part of answer related to natural landscape’s benefit to help restoration from attentional fatigue.
Secondly, based on the application of ART, people tried to measure the degrees of attention recovery benefits resulted from environment (Kaplan, 1995; Herzog et al., 1997). To make ART practical,
Hartig et al. (1997a; 1997b) developed Perceived Restorative Scale (PRS) to rate the degrees of attention recovery. In order to shift the focus from the emotion to the behavior, Hartig et al. (2001) tried to predict university students’ ecological behavior through PRS. The result corresponded that Environmental instruction is one way to promote greater interest in natural environments and ecological processes (Bowler et al., 1999). There were also some researchers tried to improve this measuring tool, like Laumman (2002), improved the scale with the concerns on the coherence of the attention restorative features . Berto (2005) simplified PRS as a 5-question short version to enhance its application and compare the result between self-report questionnaire and Sustained Attention to Response Test (SART). Additionally, for children psychology, Bagot (2004) developed a perceived restorative components scale for children (PRCS-C) with 15 items and devided Being Away into 2 types: Physical and Psychological. These kinds of researches focused on the restoration which occurred in what restorative environment was. Generally speaking, natural environments elicited higher ratings of perceived restoration than the set of built or urban environments (Hartig et al., 1997; van den Berga et al., 2003).
Recently, there were more and more extensive studying themes in attention restoration, like the relation with preference (van den Berg et al. 2003; Staats et al., 2003). For practical application, some on-site investigations point the views of nature help people to concentrate their attention on studying, such as the well-being of children, have also pointed that natural settings were good for children’s cognitive function, self-discipline, and attention (Well, 2000; Taylor et al., 2002; Taylor et al., 2001). Only few academics measured participants’ real-time performance of directed attention with a natural
view (Chang & Chen, 2005). Tennessen & Cimprich (1995) applied some standard measures of attention, like Digital Span test, to assess the attention of university students living in dormitories. They pointed that exposure to nature had a restorative effect to directed attention. This research also mentioned directed attention capacity was essential for the effective performance of using selected information, making and carrying out plans, and self-regulation. However, above researches focused on the difference between different types of window views. That is, it is worthy to carry out an empirical investigation to explore the continuing performance of directed attention. It may be a good idea to measure students’ performance in a real class. Tennessen & Cimprich’s paper (1995) explained the benefits of windows, especially windows with natural views.
The emphasis of the present article, by contrast, is on people’s attention, which is affected by the window view Although there were various papers reporting the high levels of consistency between photographs (or videos) and parallel responses on psychological studies (Stamp, 1990;
van den Berg et al., 2006), an empirical investigation might be still necessary. Kaplan (2001) discussed recent researches reporting the benefits of the windows in workplaces, hospitals, prisons, residents, and health care services, and clarified the difference between windows and contents of the window views. As mentioned earlier, these researches collected data through task experiments or self-report questionnaires (Ulrich, 1984; Verderber, 1986; Tennessen & Cimprich, 1995; Kaplan, 2001). This article focuses on the students’ on-site attention performance resulted from windows with/without the natural view.
