Urbanization is positively associated with global perceptual style

Abstract

More and more people are moving to cities, resulting in more than half of the world's population living today in urban areas. The impact of the physical environment on cognition has been a subject of study in environmental psychology, but the findings have been inconclusive due to its complexity. While some studies have indicated a negative correlation between urbanization and cognitive abilities, others have found no significant effects. The current study investigates the relationship between urbanicity, multitasking abilities, and perceptual style. Specifically, the study aims to determine whether individuals living in highly urban environments exhibit different multitasking abilities compared to those living in low urbanicity environments and whether perceptual style mediates this relationship. Previous research suggests that rural residents show a local perceptual bias and better attentional control, which may affect their multitasking abilities. Participants were recruited from two distinct postcode areas in the UK classified as urbanicity-high and urbanicity-low based on the percentage of urban features present. Our study found no association between urbanicity and multitasking abilities. However, additional analyses revealed that other variables related to the engagement with their physical environment, such as time spent outdoors, and time spent in nature were associated with multitasking abilities. This goes in line with the previous research showing the restorative effects that short-term exposure to nature can have on cognition. Additionally, we examined the relationship between urbanicity and perceptual style using a global-local visual processing task. In line with previous research, dwellers living in highly urban areas showed a global bias as compared to those living in less urban areas. Overall, our results suggest that the physical environment in which people live is associated with the way they process visual information.