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      Comparing the mental effects of interacting with farm animals and walking in a botanical garden

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          Abstract

          Over the past two decades, farm animal-assisted therapies have become popular. However, the effects of farm animals on healthy people’s mental states have not yet been investigated. In Study 1, we aimed to explore whether positive effects of human-animal interaction (HAI) can be detected in healthy farm volunteers even after short-term (2–3 hours) work with goats and goatlings on a goat farm. We found that the participants’ state anxiety decreased (p < 0.001) while their trust levels increased (p < 0.001) after interacting with goats. Nevertheless, it is possible that time spent in nature alone can have a beneficial effect on well-being. Therefore, in Study 2, we compared the results of Study 1 with those of a similar short-term outdoor treatment, walking in a botanical garden as a visitor. Similar but smaller effects were found for garden visitors. Decreases in anxiety scores and increases in trust scores were more pronounced in farm volunteers (anxiety: 25% vs 13%, p < 0.001; trust: 13% vs 3%, p = 0.002) after the treatments. Overall, the results suggest that the novel experience of interacting with goats and goatlings has a more positive effect on the mental state of healthy humans than walking in a botanical garden. This finding offer a strong foundation for developing animal assisted therapy methods for individuals with short or long term mental problems, but they can also enhance the wellbeing of mentally healthy people.

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          The cognitive benefits of interacting with nature.

          We compare the restorative effects on cognitive functioning of interactions with natural versus urban environments. Attention restoration theory (ART) provides an analysis of the kinds of environments that lead to improvements in directed-attention abilities. Nature, which is filled with intriguing stimuli, modestly grabs attention in a bottom-up fashion, allowing top-down directed-attention abilities a chance to replenish. Unlike natural environments, urban environments are filled with stimulation that captures attention dramatically and additionally requires directed attention (e.g., to avoid being hit by a car), making them less restorative. We present two experiments that show that walking in nature or viewing pictures of nature can improve directed-attention abilities as measured with a backwards digit-span task and the Attention Network Task, thus validating attention restoration theory.
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            The impacts of nature experience on human cognitive function and mental health.

            Scholars spanning a variety of disciplines have studied the ways in which contact with natural environments may impact human well-being. We review the effects of such nature experience on human cognitive function and mental health, synthesizing work from environmental psychology, urban planning, the medical literature, and landscape aesthetics. We provide an overview of the prevailing explanatory theories of these effects, the ways in which exposure to nature has been considered, and the role that individuals' preferences for nature may play in the impact of the environment on psychological functioning. Drawing from the highly productive but disparate programs of research in this area, we conclude by proposing a system of categorization for different types of nature experience. We also outline key questions for future work, including further inquiry into which elements of the natural environment may have impacts on cognitive function and mental health; what the most effective type, duration, and frequency of contact may be; and what the possible neural mechanisms are that could be responsible for the documented effects. © 2012 New York Academy of Sciences.
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              What are the Benefits of Interacting with Nature?

              There is mounting empirical evidence that interacting with nature delivers measurable benefits to people. Reviews of this topic have generally focused on a specific type of benefit, been limited to a single discipline, or covered the benefits delivered from a particular type of interaction. Here we construct novel typologies of the settings, interactions and potential benefits of people-nature experiences, and use these to organise an assessment of the benefits of interacting with nature. We discover that evidence for the benefits of interacting with nature is geographically biased towards high latitudes and Western societies, potentially contributing to a focus on certain types of settings and benefits. Social scientists have been the most active researchers in this field. Contributions from ecologists are few in number, perhaps hindering the identification of key ecological features of the natural environment that deliver human benefits. Although many types of benefits have been studied, benefits to physical health, cognitive performance and psychological well-being have received much more attention than the social or spiritual benefits of interacting with nature, despite the potential for important consequences arising from the latter. The evidence for most benefits is correlational, and although there are several experimental studies, little as yet is known about the mechanisms that are important for delivering these benefits. For example, we do not know which characteristics of natural settings (e.g., biodiversity, level of disturbance, proximity, accessibility) are most important for triggering a beneficial interaction, and how these characteristics vary in importance among cultures, geographic regions and socio-economic groups. These are key directions for future research if we are to design landscapes that promote high quality interactions between people and nature in a rapidly urbanising world.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: ResourcesRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: Project administrationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Formal analysisRole: MethodologyRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Formal analysisRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS One
                plos
                PLOS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                29 October 2024
                2024
                : 19
                : 10
                : e0312021
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Department of Ethology, Institute of Biology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
                [2 ] MTA-ELTE Lendület "Momentum" Companion Animal Research Group, Budapest, Hungary
                [3 ] ELTE NAP Canine Brain Research Group, Budapest, Hungary
                [4 ] HUN-REN-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, Budapest, Hungary
                University of British Columbia, CANADA
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7887-0194
                Article
                PONE-D-23-25717
                10.1371/journal.pone.0312021
                11521252
                39471187
                abcccfce-74e9-460b-bf2a-7c5c5d684511
                © 2024 Temesi 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.

                History
                : 5 September 2023
                : 27 September 2024
                Page count
                Figures: 2, Tables: 1, Pages: 18
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003825, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia;
                Award ID: PH1404/21
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003825, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia;
                Award ID: NAP2022-I-3/2022
                Award Recipient :
                The study was supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences via a grant to the MTA-ELTE ‘Lendület/Momentum’ Companion Animal Research Group (grant no. PH1404/21). Enikő Kubinyi was supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences via a grant to the MTA-ELTE ‘Lendület/Momentum’ Companion Animal Research Group (grant no. PH1404/21), the National Brain Programme 3.0 (NAP2022-I-3/2022). Ákos Pogány was supported by the Hungarian Ethology Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
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                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Eukaryota
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Mammals
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                Biology and Life Sciences
                Zoology
                Animals
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