S09 - Session O5 - Horticultural Therapy and Recovery from Attentional Fatigue: Review and Research Agenda

Authors: William Sullivan *, Shih-Han Hung, Chun-Yen Chang

Horticulture therapy has been shown to benefit a wide variety of people: from individuals with mental health conditions (Cipriani, et al., 2017), institutionalized older adults (Lin, et al., 2020), individuals with dementia (Blake & Mitchell, 2016), children how are hospitalized (Mugion, & Menicucci, 2020). There is emerging theory suggesting that horticultural therapy can even enhance the experience Qi m the vital energy (described in traditional Chinese medicine) that guides a person's mental and physical health (Hung, &. Chang, 2021). One area that we know less about, however, is the impact of horticultural therapy on a person's capacity to pay attention and recover from mental fatigue. This is a costly gap in our knowledge because ones capacity to pay attention underlies one's ability to accomplish anything of importance. It is vital, for instance, to learning, problem-solving, perseverance, and planning. It is necessary to maintain an ongoing train of thought, set goals, initiate and carry out tasks, monitor and regulate one's behavior, and to function effectively in social situations (Sullivan & Li, 2021). To what extent does participation in horticultural therapy impact a person's capacity to pay attention, and especially to recover from having a fatigued attention? To address this question, we review each of the horticultural therapy articles indexed in the Web of Science that cite Attention Restoration Theory (Kaplan, 1995). Then, taking a detailed look at the papers, we set out to systematically address the question above. Our findings shed light on the extent to which horticultural therapy impacts people's capacity to recover from attentional fatigue, identify critical questions for future research, and make suggestions for the application of horticultural therapy to a broad population of people who regularly experience mental fatigue.