Children

Ziv and Doley studied ways to reduce playground bullying among 6^th graders.  They found that when calming, new age type music was played on playgrounds, children were bullied less by other children: “Results showed significantly reduced bullying occurrence, lower arousal levels, and higher enjoyment of recess when music was played. Bullying occurrence increased on the third week [when music was no longer played], though it remained lower than on the first week [when no music was played; music was only played during week 2].

Research by ophthalmologists indicates that when children spend time outdoors at recess, they are less likely to be nearsighted.  As the American Academy of Ophthalmology reports, “when children are required to spend recess time outdoors, their risk of nearsightedness is reduced.”  Design that encourages outdoor recess is important because nearsightedness is “near[ing] epidemic status in Asia and other regions, primarily in developed countries. In the United States nearsightedness has increased by more than 65 percent since 1970.

Silvis reports information shared by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality linking particular healthcare design decisions to quality of care provided.  For example: “To reduce the need to sedate its young patients, the radiology department at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC introduced a program that uses various techniques to distract and engage patients, including theme-based room designs (such as a beach room, where walls feature a boardwalk and beach scenes, an oxygen tank looks like a scuba tank, and a linear accelerator is disguised as a sandca

Krentz and Earl learned that infants and adults prefer the same sorts of abstract art – images with high visual contrast and moderate visual complexity.  They conclude that “although we cannot make the claim that these preferences are innate, we can suggest that their emergence in the first 6 months of life are both biologically based and driven by exposure to highly reliable sources of visual information from the environment.”