The Impact of Nature on Attention, Communication, Emotional Regulation and Social Skills
Environment counts for so much when it comes to learning communication.
Time spend in nature can have huge benefits which research is only just beginning to catch up with. It can be hard to know where to start getting support, and plenty of families find it difficult to afford regular professional help. So just to get started I’ve put together a quick summary of benefits nature can have on the communication skills of both children and adults:
- Extended time in nature improves focus and attention
- Exposure to nature reduces anxiety and promotes relaxation
- Natural settings can encourage friendship and the expression of emotion. Research shows positive associations between nature-based education and development of social skills, and can lead to an increase in pro social behaviour
- There is statistical evidence that time spent in natural outdoor spaces decreasing bulling in school
- Nature gives people a greater sense of wellbeing, higher self-esteem and confidence. They even laugh more!
For children with developmental needs nature can provide amazing support:
- Building confidence for children with selective mutism
- For autistic children, the multimodal environment helps sensory integration
- Children use 5 times more words when they play outdoors compared to indoors
- Children who are described as ‘connected to nature’ have higher language skills on school entry and achieve higher scores on English SATs
- Parent-child interaction is more responsive and connected during play outdoors
- Lexical diversity increases when children play outdoors
It’s important to remember that it is hard to define what an outdoor environment is, and there are big gaps in the research! However, children have been learning communication and friendships skills outdoors for millennia and it seems intuitive that, since we adapted to live in a mostly outdoor environment, nature remains positive for our development and wellbeing today.
In fact, the evidence for this is growing so quickly that Dr Steph Scott (see below) thinks that nature could be considered as a universal public health intervention for communication needs.
Want to know where to start? Try spending an hour outdoors per day for a week. See what happens!
References:
Stephen Kaplan (1995) The restorative benefits of nature, Journal of Environmental Psychology https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0272494495900012
Felisberti et al (2025) Anxiety, nature exposure, and mental imagery https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/psychological-determinants-of-aesthetic-and-affective-preferences/
Steph Scott et al https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/19/12038
Steph Scott and Dr Kenna Charlton (2025) RCSLT 80 Years Conference
Cameron-Faulkner, T.; Melville, J.; Gattis, M. Responding to nature: Natural environments improve parent-child communication. J. Environ. Psychol. 2018, 59, 9–15