Latest Blog Posts
Yoshikawa, Nittono, and Masaki detail the cognitive benefits of looking at cute images. They report that “QE [quiet eye] is a gaze phenomenon, and its duration . . . is thought to represent attention control. . . . several studies have confirmed that viewing cute pictures can induce focal attention, thus improving performance in fine motor tasks. . . . We randomly assigned participants to either the baby-animal pictures group or the adult-animal pictures group, based on pictures viewed prior to the task. . . . task precision increased after viewing pictures of baby animals in both the post-test and pressure test. Furthermore, QE duration was also prolonged after viewing cute pictures in the post-test, but not in the pressure test. Neither performance improvement nor QE prolongation were found after viewing pictures of adult animals. These results suggested that simply viewing cute pictures could prolong QE duration without pressure, and might provide a beneficial effect on performance, even in a high-pressure situation.”
Naoki Yoshikawa, Hiroshi Nittono, and Hiroaki Masaki. “Effects of Viewing Cute Pictures on Quiet Eye Duration and Fine Motor Task Performance.” Frontiers in Psychology, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01565
Lee and Contreras evaluated how walkability and crime are related using data collected in Los Angeles. They determined that “walkability had an especially strong linear effect on robbery rates: a 24% increase in the robbery rate accompanied a 10-point increase in Walk Score on a block, controlling for the effects of local businesses and sociodemographic characteristics. . . . Our final set of models suggests that the walkability–crime relationship might depend on neighborhood social organization: When walkability is high, low-income blocks might experience sharp rises in rates of predatory violence as compared with more advantaged blocks.”
Narae Lee and Christopher Contreras. “Neighborhood Walkability and Crime: Does the Relationship Vary by Crime Type?” Environment and Behavior, in press, https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916520921843
Yu, Xiong, and Lee evaluated the shapes of personal spaces among Chinese people. They report that “Participants were required to determine their IPS [interpersonal space] in eight directions (0°, 45°, 90°, 135°, 180°, 225°, 270°, 315°) when approached by male or female confederates. . . . IPS was significantly influenced by direction . . . with the largest distance in the front (0°) and the closest distance in the rear (135°, 180°, 225°). . . . Participants maintained a larger IPS . . . with a male confederate than a female confederate. . . IPS . . . boundaries could be applied in environmental design, space utilization.”
Xiaoqing Yu, Wei Xiong, and Yu-Chi Lee. 2020. “An Investigation Into Interpersonal and Peripersonal Spaces of Chinese People for Different Directions and Genders.” Frontiers in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00981
Researchers investigated how green spaces (public parks) influence the wellbeing of city-dwellers; findings are published in the Journal of Public Space. The Sahakian-lead group evaluated data collected in Chennai, Singapore, Manila, and Shanghai and report that their project “was based on a list of nine ‘protected needs’ that society has the capacity to meet. . . . parks fulfill almost all these needs to varying degrees, with three in particular standing out. . . . parks play an essential role in the well-being of individuals . . . they cannot be replaced by other venues where people meet, such as shopping centres.. . .‘needs [investigated] correspond to what society can offer the population through the public sector’ [Sahakian quoted] . . . . (1) the availability of goods that satisfy vital needs; (2) turning your own idea of everyday life into reality; (3) living in a pleasant environment; (4) growing as a person; (5) self-determination; (6) doing activities that you value; (7) being part of a community; (8) taking part in decisions about the future of society; and (9) being protected by society.” Three needs in particular supported by public parks were 3, 4, and 7.
“Public Parks Guaranteeing Sustainable Well-Being.” 2020. Press release, Universite de Geneve, https://www.unige.ch/communication/communiques/en/2020/les-parcs-publics...
Kolarik and colleagues investigated how perceptions of distances are influenced by impaired vision; their findings are particularly useful for the development of spaces that people with compromised vision are likely to use. The researchers determined that “Blindness leads to substantial enhancements in many auditory abilities, and deficits in others. . . . we show that greater severity of visual loss is associated with increased auditory judgments of distance and room size. On average participants with severe visual losses perceived sounds to be twice as far away, and rooms to be three times larger, than sighted controls. . . . As the severity of visual impairment increased, accuracy decreased for closer sounds and increased for farther sounds. However, it is for closer sounds that accurate judgments are needed to guide rapid motor responses to auditory events, e.g. planning a safe path through a busy street to avoid collisions with other people, and falls. Interestingly, greater visual impairment severity was associated with more accurate room size estimates.”
Andrew Kolarik, Rajiv Raman, Brian Moore, Silvia Cirstea, Sarika Gopalakrishnan, and Shahina Pardhan. 2020. “The Accuracy of Auditory Spatial Judgments in the Visually Impaired is Dependent on Sound Source Distance.” Scientific Reports, vol. 10, article 7169, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64306-8
Li, Liu, and Li studied the effects of being in an orderly environment on thoughts and behaviors. They share that previous research has shown that “Environmental orderliness can affect both self-control behaviors and creative thinking.” Their work “investigated the moderating effect of trait [inherently characteristic of a person] self-control on environmental orderliness influencing both self-control behaviors and creative thinking. . . . Participants exposed to an orderly or a disorderly room were asked to complete a breath-holding task measuring self-control. . . . low trait self-control participants were more self-controlled in the orderly environment, while the self-control of those with high trait self-control was not affected by environmental orderliness. . . . the moderating effect of trait self-control on environmental orderliness affecting creative thinking was investigated with a picture priming orderliness and the Alternative Uses Test. As expected, participants with high trait self-control in the disorderly environment had better creative thinking performance, although there was no difference in the performance of those with low trait self-control between the two environmental orderliness conditions.”
Zhengyan Li, Ning Liu, and Shouxin Li. “Environmental Orderliness Affects Self-Control and Creative Thinking: The Moderating Effects of Trait Self-Control.” Frontiers in Psychology, in press, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01515
Song and Gao investigated how wellbeing is influenced by telework; their findings will interest people developing and managing workplaces. Specifically, Song and Gao probed “how subjective well-being varies among wage/salary workers between working at home and working in the workplace. . . . We find that compared to working in the workplace, bringing work home on weekdays is associated with less happiness, and telework on weekdays or weekends/holidays is associated with more stress. The effect of working at home on subjective well-being also varies by parental status and gender. Parents, especially fathers, report a lower level of subjective well-being when working at home on weekdays but a higher level of subjective well-being when working at home on weekends/holidays. Non-parents’ subjective well-being does not vary much by where they work on weekdays, but on weekends/holidays childless males feel less painful whereas childless females feel more stressed when teleworking instead of working in the workplace.”
Younghwan Song and Jia Gao. 2019. “Does Telework Stress Employees Out? A Study on Working at Home and Subjective Well-Being for Wage/Salary Workers.” Journal of Happiness Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-019-00196-6
Chew, Lambiase, and colleagues studied physiological and emotional variations from one person to another in responses to music heard. Their work indicates that someone can “Play the same piece of music to two people, and their hearts can respond very differently. . . . patients with mild heart failure requiring a pacemaker were invited to a live classical piano concert. . . . Professor Chew said: ‘Even though two people might have statistically significant changes across the same musical transition, their responses could go in opposite directions. So for one person the musical transition is relaxing, while for another it is arousing or stress inducing.’ For example: a person not expecting a transition from soft to loud music could find it stressful, leading to a shortened heart recovery time. For another person it could be the resolution to a long build-up in the music and hence a release, resulting in a lengthened heart recovery time.”
Sophia Antipolis. “Every Heart Dances to a Different Tune.” Press release, European Society of Cardiology, https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases/Every-heart...
Malafouris’ work highlights the psychological implications of the things that fill our world. As he reports, “We think ‘with’ and ‘through’ things, not simply ‘about’ things. . . . to think and to feel, we need more than a brain. Brain regions work in concert, but they are never alone; rather, they are always parts of broader systems extending beyond skin and skull. . . . New artifacts create novel relations and understandings of the world. New materialities bring about new modes of acting and thinking. . . . The claim is that things actively participate in human cognitive life or that human thinking is better described as thinging. We think with and through things, not simply about things. In particular, for the material-engagement approach, withness and throughness take precedence over aboutness.. . . We create new things, embodied practices, and material cultures, which in turn make up our minds and constitute ourselves.”
Lambros Malafouris. 2020. “Thinking as ‘Thinging’: Psychology With Things.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 3-8, DOI: 10.1177/0963721419873349
Taylor and Butts-Wilmsmeyer studied kindergarten students’ ability to self-regulate their behavior after spending class time in green schoolyards. The researchers found via data collected at several schools that “girls in classes engaging in curriculum in greenspaces daily [for a minimum of 30 or 60 minutes, depending on the season] scored higher on measures of self-regulation post-intervention, controlling for baseline scores, than did girls engaging at a low frequency [once weekly for 60 minutes or less]. Furthermore, students who spent more minutes in greenspaces weekly tended to score higher post-intervention, although this relationship was more consistent for girls than boys. Results suggest that green schoolyards support children's self-regulation development, and the higher the frequency of visits, and the more minutes weekly, the greater the gains. . . . behavioral self-regulation is broadly defined as including ‘both top-down planning processes (e.g., executive functions or EF) and bottom-up regulation of more reactive impulses’ (McClelland et al., 2014, p. 2). EF includes attentional or cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control (McClelland et al., 2014).” The researchers report that self-regulation as a young child has been tied to later-in-life academic success and wellbeing.
Andrea Taylor and Carrie Butts-Wilmsmeyer. “Self-Regulation Gains in Kindergarten Related to Frequency of Green Schoolyard Use.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101440
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