Validity of self-reported Well-being Measures and Restoration Scale for emotions, attention, and physiology

Currently, 15 self-reported restoration/restorativeness scales have been developed, but a comparison of their results with objective cognitive performance and actual physiological functions remains scarce. The objectives of this study were therefore to employ psychophysiological methods to examine perceived restoration using self-reported scales and to determine whether it was consistent with actual changes in psychophysiological functioning. A randomized controlled trial approach in this study involved two experiments and each experiment induced two restoration needs. The Well-being Measures (WBM), Restoration Scale (RS), PAD Emotion Scale, an objective attention test, and a physiological device were used to collect the participants' psychophysiological data. The results showed that: (1) the WBM and the RS exhibited favorable correlations with the self-reported emotion scale and weak correlations with attention performance and physiological functioning; (2) the RS measured emotional and physiological responses slightly better than the WBM; and (3) the WBM measured attention level slightly better than the RS.