Air Quality and Children’s Health (12-01-23)
Marshall and colleagues probed relationships between air quality and the physical health of 9- and 10-year-olds. They completed “cross-sectional analyses of 8,429 youth . . .
Marshall and colleagues probed relationships between air quality and the physical health of 9- and 10-year-olds. They completed “cross-sectional analyses of 8,429 youth . . .
Danvers and colleagues looked into the relationship between spending time alone and feeling lonely. They learned that “spending more than 75% of time alone was associated with much higher loneliness scores. . . . people who spend very much or very little of their time surrounded by others tend to report the greatest loneliness. . . . loneliness is particularly high among people who spend a very high proportion of their time alone (more than approximately 75% of their waking hours).
Ai, Yang, and Wang investigated tools that make it less likely that people get lost as they travel from one space to another. The team analyzed data from people 66 years old and older and people 65 and under, focusing on when study participants needed to decide how to move through a space “when the navigation aid was a map, a map plus self-updating (Global Positioning System [GPS]), or a text. After the wayfinding task, they completed two spatial memory tasks recalling scenes and drawing the routes. . . . younger adults outperformed older adults on most outcome measures.
Vella-Brodrick and Gilowska’s work confirms that there are advantages to exposure to natural environments. They conducted a literature review “examining the effects of nature interventions on the cognitive functioning of young people aged 5 to 18 years. Examples of nature interventions include outdoor learning, green playgrounds, walks in nature, plants in classrooms and nature views from classroom windows. These can vary in duration and level of interaction (passive or active). . . .
Woo and colleagues studied the cognitive implications of nighttime scenting; it is possible that their findings are useful in other contexts. The investigators report that “Male and female older adults . . . age 60–85, were enrolled in the study and randomly assigned to an Olfactory Enriched or Control group. Individuals in the enriched group were exposed to 7 different odorants a week, one per night, for 2 h, using an odorant diffuser. Individuals in the control group had the same experience with de minimis amounts of odorant.
Layouts in stars? Grids?
Landscapes affect brain development
Brightening up young minds
Via a literature review, Din and colleagues probed best practices for designing healing gardens to be used by children.
Acting like short adults