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Forest school is a form of outdoor learning that takes children into regular and repeated learning experiences in natural settings. Being based on a comprehensive experience with nature, it is assumed to be beneficial for learning and to promote restorative effects on cognitive and emotional function in preschool children. This review aimed to examine the available evidence on the benefits of forest school compared to indoor school activities in children aged 3 to 6 years. We searched for studies on forest school for preschool children in PsycInfo, JSTOR, and Scopus, with no restriction on publication year. The risk of bias was assessed using Joanna Briggs's criteria for quasi-experimental design. Of the 190 articles identified, 16 studies were reviewed (N = 1560). Higher benefits were found in children attending forest school compared to those attending indoor school in various areas of child development: cognitive function, motor coordination and balance, connectedness to nature, and health and well-being outcomes. There is, however, still a shortage of empirical evidence, and the methodological quality of most studies was limited. The literature on forest schools for preschool children in general supports positive effects in a wide range of variables that promote child health and development, but more evidence is needed to assess their effectiveness. Due to the methodological weaknesses of the reviewed studies, one should interpret their findings with caution.

When learning an environment from virtual navigation people gain knowledge about landmarks, their locations, and the paths that connect them. The present study newly aimed to investigate all these domains of knowledge and how cognitive factors such as visuospatial abilities and wayfinding inclinations might support virtual passive navigation. A total of 270 participants (145 women) were tested online. They: (1) completed visuospatial tasks and answered questionnaires on their wayfinding inclinations; and (2) learnt a virtual path. The environmental knowledge they gained was assessed on their free recall of landmarks, their egocentric and allocentric pointing accuracy (location knowledge), and their performance in route direction and landmark location tasks (path knowledge). Visuospatial abilities and wayfinding inclinations emerged as two separate factors, and environmental knowledge as a single factor. The SEM model showed that both visuospatial abilities and wayfinding inclinations support the environmental knowledge factor, with similar pattern of relationships in men and women. Overall, factors related to the individual are relevant to the environmental knowledge gained from an online virtual passive navigation.

There is growing interest recently in the outdoor environment surrounding schools where students spent time during breaks, in-school activities, and after-school programs. Several reviews have examined the impact of long-term exposures to nearby nature on students' academic achievement, but none has focused on the effects of short-term contacts with nature on students' cognitive performance. The aim of this review is to understand the context in which short-term passive exposures to greenness occur, how cognitive performance is measured, and the conditions under which cognitive benefits emerge at various educational levels. We reviewed 14 studies in the extant literature that report investigations involving students at different educational levels, from elementary school to university, in a short exposure to nature lasting from 10 to 90 min during a study day. The review shows that in 12 out of the 14 studies, across educational levels, cognitive benefits emerge in terms of directed attention restoration from mental fatigue due to contact with nature. A no-cost opportunity to sustain students' cognition is a break in a green environment after mentally demanding activities.

Background and Objectives Navigational skills display clear signs of decline with increasing age, especially in pathological aging. Therefore, navigability —the extent to which destinations can be reached with reasonable effort and time—should be considered in residential care home design. We aimed to develop a scale assessing environmental features (i.e. indoor visual differentiation, signage, and layout) for navigability in residential care homes: the Residential Care Home Navigability (RCHN) scale. To this end, we examined whether navigability and its factors were associated with a sense of direction within the residential care homes to different degrees for older adult residents, caregivers, and staff. The relationship between navigability and residential satisfaction was also considered. Research Design and Methods A sample of 523 participants (230 residents, 126 family caregivers, and 167 staff members) responded to the RCHN, assessed their sense of orientation and general satisfaction, and performed a pointing task. Results Results confirmed the RCHN scale's 3-level factor structure, good reliability, and validity. A subjective sense of direction, but not pointing task performance, was associated with navigability and its factors. In particular, visual differentiation is positively associated with a sense of direction regardless of group, whereas signage and layout contributed to a better experience of a sense of direction, especially among older residents. Navigability was not related to residents' satisfaction. Discussion and Implications Navigability supports perceived orientation in residential care homes, especially for older residents. Moreover, the RCHN is a reliable tool for the assessment of RCHN, with important implications for minimizing spatial disorientation through environmental interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Self-evaluations about orientation and navigation in the environment contribute to individual differences in spatial cognition. Evidence suggests that they may change, even slightly, with the progression of adulthood. It is necessary to improve the framing of environment-related subjective self-evaluations in adulthood and aging by examining how they change and the factors related to them. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the developmental trajectories of sense of direction, spatial anxiety, and attitude in exploring place across the adult lifespan while also considering gender and education. Materials and methods: A sample of 1,946 participants (1,068 women), aged 18–87 years, completed the sense of direction and spatial representation, spatial anxiety, and attitude in exploring scales. Results: The regression models showed a linear increase in sense of direction with age, stable spatial anxiety until age 66 years when anxiety began increasing, and a stable attitude in exploring with a deflection by age 71 years. Gender played a role in all three types of self-evaluations, with men reporting higher ratings in sense of direction and attitude toward exploring (especially in older men), and lower levels of spatial anxiety than women did. Education also played a role, with higher education years associated with lower ratings in spatial anxiety and a higher sense of direction, nullifying gender differences in the latter. Discussion: These results offer, in the spatial cognition framework, a better understanding of how specific environment-related self-evaluations develop with age and related factors, such as education. This underscores the importance of enhancing them, particularly in women and older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates how visuo-spatial abilities (such as mental rotation--MR--and visuo-spatial working memory--VSWM--) work together to influence the recall of environmental descriptions. We tested a mediation model in which VSWM was assumed to mediate the relationship between MR and spatial text recall. First, 120 participants were assessed for MR and working memory (both visuo-spatial and verbal) abilities. Participants then listened to spatial descriptions and performed spatial recall tasks. The expected model was verified, indicating that it is possible to define an order for how visuo-spatial abilities modulate environmental learning, with MR as a predictor and VSWM as a mediator. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

The present research investigates the role of individual differences in preference for adopting extrinsic frame of reference (EFR) in ability to represent mentally spatial information learned through survey and route descriptions. A sample of 191 participants (100 females and 91 males) was categorized as four groups with high (H-EFR), medium-high (MH-EFR), medium-low (ML-EFR) and low (L-EFR) preference. The groups listened to two spatial descriptions in survey and route perspectives, subsequently performing true/false verification and map drawing tasks. They also performed a number of visuo-spatial, verbal and geographical pointing tasks. Results showed a general better performance of the H-EFR group and of males--in comparison with lower-ability counterparts and females respectively--in spatial text recall tasks and in other spatial measures. Moreover, spatial ability interacts with text perspective: in verification test the H-EFR group outperformed the lower groups in survey and route inferential sentences and in map drawing the superiority of H-EFR group was shown with survey (but not with route) text. Overall, the results suggest that individuals with high preference for extrinsic frame of reference are able to manage environment information in both spatial perspectives even if they prefer to express it in survey format. That preference is specifically sustained by spatial abilities. (Contains 7 tables.)

This study compares the effects on Mental Rotation Test (MRT) performance of instructions that stress the importance of (a) personal effort, and (b) genetically driven ability. A total of 120 high-school students were assigned to three groups, and administered two sub-tests of the MRT. Between the first and second sub-tests, the groups received one of the following instructions: effort ("anyone can succeed in this task by putting in effort"), ability ("performance on the test depends on genetic determinants"), and neutral for control ("this is an important test used in many countries"). We predicted that effort but not ability instructions would affect performance. Results confirmed the prediction and showed that, after controlling for baseline performance, the effort group outperformed the ability and control groups, which did not differ from each other. Discussion focuses on the mechanisms implied in believing ability to be genetically determined or experientially driven. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

This study examines how good strategies and praxis interplay with positive affect and self-efficacy to determine a teacher's job satisfaction, in the hypothesis that teaching effectively does not in itself guarantee satisfaction: positive affect and self-efficacy beliefs are needed. Self-assessment scales, designed to assess the use of efficient teaching strategies and praxes, self-efficacy in teaching, positive affect and job satisfaction, were completed by 399 teachers. Structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis revealed the mediating role of both positive affect and self-efficacy beliefs in the relationship between teaching strategies/praxes and job satisfaction. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)

The present study investigates the relation between spatial ability and visuo-spatial and verbal working memory in spatial text processing. In two experiments, participants listened to a spatial text (Experiments 1 and 2) and a non-spatial text (Experiment 1), at the same time performing a spatial or a verbal concurrent task, or no secondary task. To understand how individuals who differ in spatial ability process spatial text during dual task performance, spatial individual differences were analyzed. The tasks administered were the Vandenberg and Kuse [Vandenberg, S. G., & Kuse, A. R. (1978). Mental rotation, a group test of three-dimensional spatial visualization. "Perceptual and Motor Skills, 47", 599-604.] mental rotation test (MRT) and a reading comprehension task (RCT). Individuals with high (HMR) and low (LMR) mental rotation differed in MRT scores but had similar RCT performance. Results showed that the HMR group, in contrast with LMR counterparts, preserved good spatial text recall even when a spatial concurrent task was performed; however, Experiment 2 revealed a modification of spatial concurrent task performance in LMR as well in HMR group. Overall, results suggest that HMR individuals have more spatial resources than LMR individuals, allowing them to compensate for spatial working memory interference, but only to a limited extent, given that the processing of spatial information is still mediated by VSWM. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

This study aims to investigate the types of difficulty encountered by children with nonverbal (visuospatial) learning disabilities (NLD) during the processing of spatial information derived from descriptions. Two spatial descriptions--one in survey, one in route perspective--and one nonspatial description were orally presented to children aged 9-12 divided in three groups: (i) with NLD (N = 12), (ii) with reading disability (RD) (N = 11), and (iii) without learning disabilities who served as controls (N = 16). Children performed two tasks: sentence verification and location. In the verification task, NLD performed worse in survey text than control and RD groups. Moreover, in the location task NLD were worse than controls in both survey and route descriptions, but significantly poorer than the RD group only in the survey description. The results are discussed considering their implications in understanding the neuropsychological profile of NLD and the processes involved by different types of spatial descriptions. (Contains 2 tables.)

There are a large number of studies demonstrating that visuospatial working memory (VSWM) involves different subcomponents, but there is no agreement on the identity of these dimensions. The present study attempts to combine different theoretical accounts by measuring VSWM. A battery composed of 13 tests was used to assess working memory and, in particular, the hypothesized mechanisms involved in the tasks, that is, active processing and passive recall of visual versus sequential-spatial versus simultaneous-spatial versus verbal tasks. The battery consisted of a number of tests already used in previous studies and new tests developed to examine specific components of working memory. We analysed the psychometric characteristics of the tests, the correlations amongst measured variables and estimated the measured variables with structural equation modelling in children attending third and fourth grades. Results revealed that the best model was composed of a specific verbal factor, three visuospatial passive factors (sequential-spatial, simultaneous-spatial, and visual) and one visuospatial active factor.

Many models have hypothesized that multimedia comprehension requires the concurrent processing of verbal and visuospatial information by limited information processing systems. However, in spite of the emphasis devoted to the concurrent processing of verbal and visuospatial information, little research has so far investigated the specific role played by verbal and visuospatial abilities in multimedia comprehension. The present paper aims to study the specific involvement of verbal and visuospatial working memory in multimedia learning. Ninety-two students (39 boys and 53 girls) from a middle school in a small city in the northeast of Italy, were asked to learn new information on the physical and social geography of Germany from a hypermedium. Participants were also required to perform a reading comprehension test, two short-term memory tasks, and two working memory tasks, which assessed either verbal or visuospatial memory. The results support the hypothesis that both verbal and visuospatial working memory sub-components play a role in hypermedium processing, but with specific and distinct functions: the performance in the verbal working memory task was able to predict the semantic knowledge children can derive from hypermedia learning. In contrast, visuospatial working memory seemed to have lower connections to the semantic knowledge children derived from a hypermedia document, whereas its role emerged in the ability to construct a representation of the document structure.