There has always been something that troubled me about Kaplan's Attention Restoration Theory (ART).
Today, listening to a podcast with Anna-Marie Watson. I had a slight epiphany.
What if?
What if the Kaplans were wrong about Attention Restoration Theory?
The concept of ART centers on what happens when we we spend time in nature and the impact to our attention when we return to a “normal” indoor environment.
What if?
What if they got the theory backwards?
What if, when we go out in nature, that is our brains normal environment. In our normal environment (nature) our brain is acting in a normal, what the Kaplans refer to as, restored state.
When we return to the indoors that restored state persists only temporarily. Over time we slowly digress back to what we have come to believe is a normal state - a regressive non attentive state.
This is the problem. We are leaving the normal world of nature returning to the false comfort and confinement of the indoors. It is not being outside that return our attention to normal. Being outside is normal. It is being inside that deadens our senses and accordingly our ability to hold attention.
What is backwards about ART is going into nature is not restoring, it is returning. It is Leaving nature that desensitizes us.
When we are outside long enough, the unexpected is normal, and our attention is in a normal state.