Emerging studies have shown that restorative soundscapes have the potential to facilitate adults' stress recovery. Little is known, though, about whether restorative soundscapes could reduce children's stress. Therefore, the present study tested and compared the effects of several potential restorative soundscapes on children's stress using a physiological measure: electrodermal activity (EDA). During the experiment, 53 children aged 8-12 were exposed to different soundscapes (recovery period)

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... fter a stressful arithmetic task (stressor period), while children's EDA variation was monitored throughout the whole period. The results showed that children's EDA levels decreased significantly after all the soundscape exposure. However, only the fountain soundscape showed significant a better restorative effect compared with ambient noise. In addition, EDA decreased faster at the beginning and tended to increase slightly at the end of the recovery period. Moreover, significant interaction effects were found between soundscape and gender as well as time and gender. Those results suggest that soundscapes do facilitate stress recovery on children to some extent after a psychological stressor. However, different soundscapes showed varied restorative effects on boys and girls. Therefore, future soundscape design in urban parks should take children gender difference into consideration.