Indoor or Outdoor Lessons? Effects of Green School Environment on Cognitive Functioning and Affect (Poster 42)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Fifteen
  In Poster Session: Cognitive and Motivational Processes: Poster Session Five

Abstract

This study investigated cognitive and affective effects of indoor and outdoor school environments in 2nd and 3rd graders. For the cognitive effects we examined (a) selective and sustained attention and (b) math calculus performance; for the affective effects we considered (c) positive and negative mood and (d) perception of environmental restorativeness. Findings revealed that after a lesson taught in the green school garden, children had greater selective attention and math calculus performance than after a similar lesson in the classroom. Children with higher self-reported emotional difficulties showed greater selective attention and reported more positive and less negative affect after the green lesson than in the classroom. Students also perceived the green space as more restorative than the classroom.

Authors

• Angelica Ronconi, University of Padova
  Presenting Author

• Lucia Manzione, University of Padua
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lucia Mason, University of Padua
  Presenting Author