Tranquillity

It is also famously used in the Preamble to the United States Constitution, which describes one of the purposes for which the document was establishing the government as to "insure domestic Tranquility".

Being in a tranquil or "restorative" environment allows people to take respite from the periods of sustained "directed attention" that characterise modern living.

In a survey by the United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) 58% of people said that tranquillity was the most positive feature of the countryside.

[4] As the incidence of mental illness continues to rise,[5][better source needed] there is growing evidence that exposure to natural environments can contribute to health and wellbeing[non sequitur].

One review[clarification needed] found evidence of "nature-deficit-disorder" in children, which suggests that the importance of being able to engage with restorative environments applies across a wide age range.

The electrophysiological brain responses obtained in this study showed that a decision could be made within 150ms of the image being seen, indicating the speed at which cognitive visual processing occurs.

Audition, and the components that comprise the soundscape (a term coined by Schafer[14] to describe the array of sounds that constitute the sonic environment) also inform the ways people characterise landscapes.

When individuals make tranquillity assessments based on a uni-modal auditory or visual sensory input, they characterise the environment by drawing upon a number of key landscape and soundscape characteristics.

For example, when making assessments in response to visual-only stimuli the percentage of water, flora, and geological features positively influence how tranquil a location is perceived to be.

Rather configurational coherence was provided by the percentage of natural and contextual features present within the scene and the equivalent continuous sound pressure level (LAeq).

[citation needed] Researchers at the Bradford Centre for Sustainable Environments developed a methodology with which the perceived tranquillity rating (TR) of an amenity area such as park, green, or urban square can be measured, on a 0–10 scale.

One potentially effective solution to improving tranquillity is to mask traffic noise or distract attention from it with an attractive water sound.

In these maps tranquil areas were defined as "places sufficiently far from the visual or noise intrusion of development or traffic to be considered unspoilt by urban influences".

Indeed, it found that many rural activities, such as farming and hiking, and natural noises such as birdsong and cows lowing, enhance people’s experience of tranquillity.