Nature [blog 6]

Pick one of therapeutic benefits of nature and link them to research in one or more of the following areas: Abnormal, Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognitive, Developmental, Learning, and Social

     As I was reading Chapter 5, it was very easy for me to make connections from the reading to my personal life. I also started to wonder how nature and adventure therapy relates to neuroscience and what is happening in our brain when we are exposed to and experience the outdoors and also how it changes the way we feel. I came across an article that talks about how spending time in nature makes people feel more alive, this was found through a series of studies published in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of Psychology. Richard Ryan, lead author and a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester said, "Nature is fuel for the soul" (Spending time in nature makes people feel more alive, study shows). According to the article there have been numerous experimental psychology studies that have linked exposure to nature with increased energy and heightened sense of well-being. Even more closely related to Adventure Therapy, the studies show that people report feeling more alive and healthy after going on a wilderness excursion. 

     Here is an excerpt from the article that explains something we were looking at in class... 

What is novel about this research, write the authors, is that it carefully tests whether this increased vitality associated with the outdoors is simply the feel-good spillover from physical activity and people-mixing often present in these situations. To tease out the effects of nature alone, the authors conducted five separate experiments, involving 537 college students in actual and imagined contexts. In one experiment, participants were led on a 15-minute walk through indoor hallways or along a tree-lined river path. In another, the undergraduates viewed photographic scenes of buildings or landscapes. A third experiment required students to imagine themselves in a variety of situations both active and sedentary, inside and out, and with and without others.

Two final experiments tracked participants' moods and energy levels throughout the day using diary entries. Over either four days or two weeks, students recorded their exercise, social interactions, time spent outside, and exposure to natural environments, including plants and windows.

Across all methodologies, individuals consistently felt more energetic when they spent time in natural settings or imagined themselves in such situations. The findings were particularly robust, notes Ryan; being outside in nature for just 20 minutes in a day was enough to significantly boost vitality levels. Interestingly, in the last study, the presence of nature had an independent energizing effect above that of being outdoors. In other words, conclude the authors, being outdoors was vitalizing in large part because of the presence of nature (Spending time in nature makes people feel more alive, study shows).

     To relate this to a few parts of the reading from Chapter 5, I want to include a quote from the text. This comes from the beginning of the chapter and says, "Going to the mountains is going home...mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as the fountains of life" (Gass, Gillis, and Russell 2012). Even through my own experience I find that the more separated I feel from nature the more likely I am to feel stressed or anxious. It is interesting and amazing how calming nature can be. As I said in class it is helpful to take yourself out of the situations you are so used to being in and put yourself outside. It gives you a certain clarity and different perspective when thinking about your life. "Nature elicits deep-seated and automatic responses by individuals in the absence of extensive information processing. Restoration derives from the reduction of stimulus and arousal due to nature's calming effect, which elicits positively toned emotional states and blocks out negatively toned feelings" (Gass, Gillis, and Russell 2012).

What kind of ways can experiences in nature lead to changes thoughts or behaviors? Do you think people who rarely choose to spend time outside would still feel rewarded by spending time in nature? 

Leslie Weaver

Citations

Gass, M. A., Gillis, H.L., Russell, K. C. (2012). Adventure therapy: Theory, research, and practice. New York, Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

University of Rochester (2010, June 4). Spending time in nature makes people feel more alive, study shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 19, 2013. from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100603172219.htm

Outward Bound Process [blog 4]

How might The Outward Bound Process be used in psychology other than treatment?

There are many ways that people could use The Outward Bound process in psychology other than just for treatment of patients in adventure therapy settings. Here is a website that talks about what Outward Bound is. This website says the idea behind Outward Bound “is that people can grow through challenge.”

The first way I thought that the Outward Bound process could be used is in research. Since the Outward Bound process is not as conventional as say, traditional ways of looking at therapy, there could be more time spent investing in the research that lead to the models that these programs are working after. It would be interesting to learn about the long-term effects of Outward Bound processes that have been used in adventure therapy and how they have influenced the clients’ life shortly following the time of treatment and then years down the road. By researching the long-term effects of these types of programs we would be able to change them in a way to better fit each new client that would be looking to processes of the same category.

            As I was reading chapter 4 it became clear to me why Adventure Therapy and Outward Bound processes would seem like a great option (especially for substance abusers). Because when you think about it, whether or not a person wants to be there, with programs like that (vs. more traditional or cognitive behavioral therapies) the client has no other choice than to be present and involved, in a sort of way that cannot be found in the traditional indoor, client/therapist setting. Through more research on the Outward Bound process, researchers may gain a better understanding of how effective the Outward Bound process is. “Thinking, feeling, & behaving as if there is something to be gained from participating.” (Gass, Gillis, and Russell 2012). All of these different emotions and behaviors lead into a change in the participants’ beliefs, as they believe they can have control & influence their own life direction. All of which could benefit from more research on the process.

            If we look at the model that is found in the book on page 71, we see that the model “illustrates how the Outward Bound process functions, as characteristic problem-solving tasks are set in a prescribed physical and social environment, which impel the participant to mastery of these tasks and which, in turn, serve to reorganize the meaning and direction of his life experience.” (Walsh and Golins, 1967, p.16).

            To make the connection between the Outward Bound process, research, and neuroscience it would be interesting to study the effects of the model of the Outward Bound process on cognitive processes and the way the brain reacts to and is activated by certain types of activities specific to the Outward Bound process. In the Outward Bound process Model, one of the key characteristics of it is the “contrasting/novel physical environment.” This helps people involved “to generalize about old or to see old with new perspectives and options available in it” (Gass, Gillis, and Russell 2012). This could definitely be a topic of research in connection with the change in cognitive processes. If the focus was then moved to social psychology, it would be interesting to investigate the differences in interactions between groups of people and which socioeconomic groups they come from. There is a lot to be learned about the way in which a persons experience could be different depending on how many people or which people they are interacting with during the programs. According to a study done by Kalisch, it was found through prior research that when a person has a solo experience, as a small part of the overall program, the quality of their experience is enhanced (Kalisch, 2011). 

            

           

           

Citations

Gass, M. A., Gillis, H.L., Russell, K. C. (2012). Adventure therapy: Theory, research, and practice. New York, Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Kalisch, K. (2011). The Outward Bound Solo: A Study of Participants' Perceptions. Journal Of Experiential Education, 34(1), 1. doi:10.5193/JEE34.1.1

Outward Bound Professional. Retrieved from: http://www.obusa.org/index.cfm/do/pro.about