Wilderness Is the Prototype of Nature Regardless of the Individual's Connection to Nature. An Empirical Verification of the Solastalgia Effect.

(1) Background: Connectedness with Nature is a personality trait that influences our relationship with Nature. But Nature is not all the same. Wilderness is Nature in its original form, the form within which human beings have evolved as a species, while what we refer to as domesticated and urban Nature are relatively recent products of our interaction with the environment. (2) Aim: The main purpose of this study was to verify whether the individual trait "connection to Nature" influences the perception of restoration, preference for and familiarity with three types of Nature: wilderness, domesticated and urban. (3) Results: Regardless of the level of connection to Nature, wilderness is always perceived as more restorative than the domesticated or urban environment. Individuals with higher connectedness prefer wilderness more than others, and they are able to recognise the restorative value of domesticated environments more than those with medium or low levels of connectedness. Less connected individuals tend to prefer domesticated environments, although wilderness is more familiar to them. (4) Conclusions: This study shows that, despite our detachment from Nature, wilderness is the prototype of Nature, and this finding offers a plausible evolutionary explanation of solastalgia.

Biophilia as Evolutionary Adaptation: An Onto- and Phylogenetic Framework for Biophilic Design.

Biophilia is a human personality trait described initially by Erich Fromm and later by E.O. Wilson, both of whom agree that biophilia has a biological basis and that it is fundamental to develop harmonious relationships between humans and the biosphere. This review aims at establishing a definition of biophilia as an evolutionary process. To this end, the most significant studies of evolutionary psychology were considered, to outline the fundamental characteristics of a hypothetical biophilic temperament/personality and to reconstruct a plausible history of biophilia as an evolutionary process. This process considers different typologies of Nature (wilderness, rural, and urban) and human cultures (Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Burg) and leads us to consider environmental preference and psycho-physiological recovery in relation to the threshold of time spent in contact with Nature. Unfortunately, modern people, especially children, lack direct and frequent contact with Nature and this can have negative consequences on their physical and mental health. Biophilic design, considering the evolutionary roots of this architectural approach, is an effective way of planning/designing interior and urban environments to stimulate the innate biophilia of the individual.

An Individual's Connection to Nature Can Affect Perceived Restorativeness of Natural Environments. Some Observations about Biophilia.

This study investigates the relationship between the level to which a person feels connected to Nature and that person's ability to perceive the restorative value of a natural environment. We assume that perceived restorativeness may depend on an individual's connection to Nature and this relationship may also vary with the biophilic quality of the environment, i.e., the functional and aesthetic value of the natural environment which presumably gave an evolutionary advantage to our species. To this end, the level of connection to Nature and the perceived restorativeness of the environment were assessed in individuals visiting three parks characterized by their high level of "naturalness" and high or low biophilic quality. The results show that the perceived level of restorativeness is associated with the sense of connection to Nature, as well as the biophilic quality of the environment: individuals with different degrees of connection to Nature seek settings with different degrees of restorativeness and biophilic quality. This means that perceived restorativeness can also depend on an individual's "inclination" towards Nature.

The role of nature in coping with psycho-physiological stress: a literature review on restorativeness.

Physical settings can play a role in coping with stress; in particular experimental research has found strong evidence between exposure to natural environments and recovery from physiological stress and mental fatigue, giving support to both Stress Recovery Theory and Attention Restoration Theory. In fact, exposure to natural environments protects people against the impact of environmental stressors and offer physiological, emotional and attention restoration more so than urban environments. Natural places that allow the renewal of personal adaptive resources to meet the demands of everyday life are called restorative environments. Natural environments elicit greater calming responses than urban environments, and in relation to their vision there is a general reduction of physiological symptoms of stress. Exposure to natural scenes mediates the negative effects of stress reducing the negative mood state and above all enhancing positive emotions. Moreover, one can recover the decrease of cognitive performance associated with stress, especially reflected in attention tasks, through the salutary effect of viewing nature. Giving the many benefits of contact with nature, plans for urban environments should attend to restorativeness.

Aging and the intrusion superiority effect in visuo-spatial working memory.

This study investigated the active component of visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) in younger and older adults testing the hypotheses that elderly individuals have a poorer performance than younger ones and that errors in active VSWM tasks depend, at least partially, on difficulties in avoiding intrusions (i.e., avoiding already activated information). In two experiments, participants were presented with sequences of matrices on which three positions were pointed out sequentially: their task was to process all the positions but indicate only the final position of each sequence. Results showed a poorer performance in the elderly compared to the younger group and a higher number of intrusion (errors due to activated but irrelevant positions) rather than invention (errors consisting of pointing out a position never indicated by the experiementer) errors. The number of errors increased when a concurrent task was introduced (Experiment 1) and it was affected by different patterns of matrices (Experiment 2). In general, results show that elderly people have an impaired VSWM and produce a large number of errors due to inhibition failures. However, both the younger and the older adults' visuo-spatial working memory was affected by the presence of activated irrelevant information, the reduction of the available resources, and task constraints.

Application criteria of enteral nutrition in patients with anorexia nervosa: correlation between clinical and psychological data in a "lifesaving" treatment.

BACKGROUND: Data and research increasingly point to multiple factors in the genesis of eating-behavior disorders, but the lack of a clear etiological definition prevents a unique therapeutic or prognostic approach from being defined. Therapeutic approaches, as well as scientific research, have separately analyzed the psychological aspects and the clinical-nutrition aspects without integrating the variables or correlating clinical and psychological data. This work has several goals because it aims at considering the problem from the 2 different perspectives. Psychological and clinical variables are analyzed both separately and together in order to assess (a) the minimal criteria to define a cure as "lifesaving" and submit a patient to artificial nutrition; (b) the kind of implementation artificial nutrition should follow; (c) which indicators of the efficacy of artificial nutrition must be taken into account; (d) the results in nutrition terms that may be obtained during the follow-up; (e) if artificial nutrition may be used as a therapeutic tool; (f) if there are any psychological effects after artificial nutrition; (g) if there are any effects due to the patients' age; and (h) the correlation between the psychological profile of a patient and the acceptance of the nutrition treatment. METHODS: Several psychological and pharmacologic variables, together with clinical and anthropometric data and blood chemical values, were all considered. CONCLUSIONS: Besides defining minimal criteria for a "lifesaving" cure and proposing 2 ad hoc scales for the assessment of patients' subjective willingness toward feeding and for the objective measurement of feeding itself, clinical data and correlations with psychological data evidenced the importance of artificial nutrition and specifically of enteral nutrition as a therapeutic tool, allowing us to define the modalities of implementation of enteral nutrition. Results show that, because enteral nutrition did not deteriorate the psychological state of the patients, and was found to be accepted more positively than feeding orally in the most critical initial phase, it should be included in the therapy.