The Effects Of Different Types Of Natural Water Landscape On Physical And Mental Health Of College Students

Against the background of rapid economic and social development in China,the academic and employment pressure of college students increase largely,as well as the physical and mental health problems are becoming more and more prominent.It has been widely proved that interaction with nature has a positive effect on users’ physical and mental health.Providing college students with more opportunities to contact the nature is actually an effective method to promote their physical and mental health,as well as an effective means of enhancing social harmony and reducing economic losses.Taking college students as objects of research,this study uses different types of natural waterscape to stimulate them,and then explores the influence of different kinds of waterscape on college students’ mental and physical health.Taking the city landscape as the control,this research explores the effects of three types of waterscape(falling water landscape,running water landscape and still water landscape)on the subjects’ physiological and mental health.In this study,Focus Group Interview method was used to set up the principles of selecting test pictures and then initially select the target pictures based on the principles.And then the final test pictures were chose by the expert through the method of Experts Grading.The experiment was completed in the laboratory,and 120 effective questionnaires about mental health data and120 groups of physiological data were obtained after the visual stimulation of a series of slide show.The evaluation method of psychological feelings is Laumann’s RCS(restoration component scale)questionnaires which was based on both the attention restoration theory put forward by Kaplan and the attention restoration scale(PRS)developed by Hartig.RCS questionnaires involved four indexes : being Away,extent,fascination and compatibility.Physiological parameters included BPs(Diastolic and Systolic Blood Pressure),Heart Pulse Rate(PR),Electroencephalograph(EGG,including α1,α2,β1,β2 values of EEG,concentration and relaxation values).The results show that,in terms of psychological impact,natural waterscape has significant mental restoration benefits for college students,and there are obvious differences in the mental restoration influences among different types of nature waterscape.Dynamic waterscape(falling water and running water landscape)has better effect on mental recovery than still waterscape,especially in falling waterscape.Among four characteristics of restoration environment of dynamic waterscape,the feature “Fascination”shows the best influence on attention restoration and the feature “Extent” comes second.As for still water landscape,“Compatibility” contributes most to attention restoration and“Fascination” takes the second place.In terms of different genders,there is no significant difference in mental recovery among these three types of waterscape between females and males.In the matter of physiological effects,three types of natural water landscape all have significant relaxation effect on college students,and there are obvious differences among them.Falling water landscape has the most significant benefits on the reduction of systolic and diastolic blood pressure.On the aspect of EEG,viewing falling waterscape contributes to the biggest change on α1,α2 and β2 values of EEG of college students,as well as concentration and meditation values,which means falling waterscape has the best physiological restoration effect.Three types of natural waterscape have diverse effects on the EGG of females and males,and the EEG of females are more sensitive to these kinds of waterscape compared with males.