Perceptually Degraded Experiences with Nature Are Liked Less but Still Restorative

Interactions with nature can improve attentional functioning and decrease mental fatigue. However, the perceptual quality of the experience might influence how effectively nature can improve these cognitive measures, as perceptual quality has been linked to how much nature sounds are liked, which may in turn influence aspects of psychological restoration. The current study manipulated the perceptual quality of both nature and urban soundscapes to examine how degraded sounds might influence the typically observed cognitive benefits of nature-based interventions. Participants (n = 227) completed a working memory task (N-back) and a self-reported mental fatigue measure before and after listening to one of four sound categories, using a 2 (sound type: unaltered, degraded) x 2 (environment: nature, urban) between-participant design. Participants additionally rated the restorativeness of the sound intervention via the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS). Despite participants liking degraded sounds less and judging them as lower in sound quality, we found comparable restorative effects of unaltered and degraded nature sounds across all measures. However, the nature-related benefits for the PRS were entirely driven by how much participants liked the sounds. In contrast, the cognitive restoration measures showed nature-related benefits even after controlling for sound liking ratings and pre-intervention scores. The findings of this study suggest that nature-based restoration can be observed even when stimuli are degraded and liked less. However, measures that focus on the restorative experience itself (e.g., PRS) appear be more related to stimulus preference than measures assessing participants’ cognitive performance.