Effects of Natural, Urban and Historical-Urban Environments on Children affected by ADHD in Italy

Attention is essential to development and is important for executive functioning. Unfortunately, a growing number of school children suffer of chronic attention deficit such as the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It is important to consider that many of these very young patients are pharmacologically treated and need to deal with side effects that may occur. Most literature on attention functioning in developing age is focused on the role that social environment plays in child development whereas scarce attention is paid on the physical environment, both built and natural. Based on Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; ART), researchers have widely shown a great impact of Nature contact on cognitive functioning, among other benefits, virtually at zero costs and without side effects. We present two consecutive studies with the aim of evaluating how a walk in three different environments may benefit children with ADHD (Study 1) and how a possible correlation could exist between symptoms’ severity (assessed by children themselves, teachers and parents), connectedness with Nature (assessed by children themselves and both parents) as well as the frequency of contact with Nature during the weekend and afterschool activities in the last 12 months (Study 2). In the first study, ART is tested on children aged 7-14 affected by ADHD in Italy (N=21). Attention, impulsivity, emotions were tested before and after the treatment (baseline and post-test); in addition, after the baseline and before the treatment, “mental fatigue” (Kaplan, 1995) was inducted through 15 minutes puzzle and other tiring tasks (maths exercise and scattegories game) and attention performance was remeasured afterwards to check the effectivity of the manipulation. The perception of the restorative value of the place and the environmental preference were also measured among conditions after treatment, by using the Italian version for children (Berto et al., 2007) of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (Bagot et al., 2004, 2007; Hartig et al., 1997). Treatment consisted into a 20 minutes individually guided walk in a within-subject design and in three different sequential order (between-subject) among the three following environmental conditions: a countryside openfield for the Nature condition, a Medieval well-kept village for the historical-urban condition, a Town for standard-urban condition. The effects of the three environments on attention and impulsivity (core ADHD components), as well as on emotions and on perceived restorativeness are discussed. Some preliminary results show better environmental perception in the Nature condition, than in the Standard-urban condition and the Historical-urban condition. In addition, in Study 2, we argue whether in the same children (N=21) a relation exists between connectedness with Nature, frequency of contact with Nature, symptoms severity and performance tests of Study 1. Study 2 also includes a more numerous sample of children with ADHD to test the above mentioned variables. Results on both studies are integrated and discussed at the conference.