Is This Nature I'm Hearing? : Sound Source Belief Influences Sustained Attention

Abstract

Psychological benefits of nature—often called restoration—are a long-held axiom of environmental psychology, but their specific mechanisms are unclear. Recent studies suggest that top-down phenomena are involved, as illustrated by findings that beliefs about the source of a sound influence how that sound is perceived. If such beliefs influence our perceptions, can they also measurably influence our behavior?

I investigated the effect of source belief on performance in a sustained attention task, using a within-subjects design. I combined sounds of nature and traffic to create an ambiguous soundscape. In an online study, 290 participants performed a color-word matching task twice, while hearing the soundscape in the background. The sound was identical, but its source was alternately attributed to nature and to traffic. Afterward, participants were asked to recall the “first” and “second” soundscape and rate the sound’s perceived restorativeness, once for each source belief condition. I analyzed restorativeness responses using linear mixed models, and task performance at the trial level using generalized linear mixed models.

Results showed that source belief had a small influence on task performance: reaction time slightly decreased when participants believed the sound originated in nature. Response accuracy was unaffected. As expected, the perceived restorativeness of the ambiguous soundscape was greater in the nature belief condition compared to the traffic condition. Notably, post-hoc analyses suggested that source belief affected reaction time only when participants genuinely perceived the ambiguous soundscape as two different sounds. Taken together, these results extend preexisting evidence for top-down mechanisms of restoration.