Center for the Built Environment

This study aims to measure the impact of having visual connections to nature through windows on the cognitive performance of university students, as assessed by their final exam scores. To build upon prior research conducted in controlled laboratory and climate chamber settings, which may have a gap between findings and real-world contexts, demonstrating the positive effects of window views on occupants, this study addressed the limitations of lab-based experiments by conducting a field test in university lecture rooms with 121 students enrolled in STEM classes, taking their actual final exam. In the field test, we randomly assigned the students to either of two conditions: one with windows and one without, while monitoring indoor environmental factors. The results revealed no significant difference in cognitive performance—whether measured by scores or cognitive efficiency gauged by the time taken to complete the exam—between students in conditions with and without window views. Given the known small effect size of having windows on cognitive performance and the relatively small number of data points, we recognized that further iterations of the field tests are required to accumulate a more substantial dataset and draw more robust conclusions.