Latest Blog Posts

Chalmin-Pui and colleagues evaluated the implications of gardening in a front yard.  Their work “explores why people garden in front gardens, how social cohesion may emerge from front gardening activities, and the health benefits of the presence of front gardens for residents and passersby. Front gardens played a key role in supporting participants’ personal identity and self-expression. Maintaining a front garden was seen as making a positive and satisfying contribution to their local area and to others’ pleasure. Social cohesion in the street or neighborhood occurred through informal verbal communication and knowledge-sharing.”

Lauriane Chalmin-Pui, Alistair Griffiths, Jenny Roe, and Ross Cameron.  2023. “Gardens with Kerb Appeal – A Framework to Understand the Relationship Between Britain in Bloom Gardeners and Their Front Gardens.”  Leisure Studies, vol. 45, no. 8, pp. 787-807, https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2021.1897715

Bailey, Anderson, and Cox wanted to learn more about the psychological implications of walking.  Their work “explores the mechanisms of active and passive leisure influence through real-time tracking of mental states while incurring a standard ‘dose’ of social media and walking. Results indicate that social media induces anxiety and mental focus, while walking enhances relaxation and meditative state. Geographic information systems (GIS) reveal that natural elements along various urban walking routes are associated with higher inward attention, and that unimpeded greenways may be more mentally restorative than built environments.”

Andrew Bailey, Madison Anderson and Garner Cox. 2023. “The Cortex in Context: Investigating the Influence of Activity and Space on Psychological Well-Being.”  Leisure Sciences, vol. 45, no. 8, pp. 724-742, https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2021.1889421

Research continues on neighborhood walkability.  Koohsari, Oka, Nakaya, and McCormack (study published in the Journal of Urban Health) conducted an extensive research project: “‘Our analyses revealed that street integration influenced walking undertaken as a means of transport. Importantly, it was the availability of destinations that strengthened this relationship. As far as leisure walking was concerned, there was no significant relationship between the distance covered and the degree of street integration,’ says Dr. Koohsari. These findings are interesting as they expand on previous insights into street connectivity and walking by relying on objective measurements of destinations and different types of walking behavior. . . . Dr. Koohsari . . . concludes, ‘Implementing the results of such analyses has two main benefits. First, designing well-connected street layouts that provide easy access to retail stores, educational institutions, and recreational facilities will encourage walking to these destinations. Second, strategically placing destinations along integrated street layouts can lead to more activity-friendly urban environments.’"

“Street Layout and Available Destinations Influence Urban Walking Behavior.”  2023. Press release, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, https://www.jaist.ac.jp/english/whatsnew/press/2023/09/01-1.html

Sepanta, O’Brien, and Arpan studied the implications of space use changes made during the pandemic.  They gathered data from people “who started teleworking and moved at least 20 kilometres away from their original homes within two years of the beginning of COVID-19. . . . The results of this study suggest most participants moved to bigger houses with dedicated offices in less accessible neighbourhoods, which prompted more vehicle purchases. . . . The interviews indicated that the overall energy use of participants has increased as a result of these changes.”

Farzam Sepanta, William O’Brien, and Laura Arpan. “Interview Study to Uncover the Energy Use Impacts and Behaviours of Teleworkers Who Relocated During COVID-19 in Canada.”  Architectural Science Review, in press, https://doi.org/10.1080/00038628.2023.2253780

Taylor and colleagues report that synesthesia occurs in the virtual world just as it does in the physical one.  The Taylor-lead team shares that “Synaesthesia is a condition where people experience unusual sensory or cognitive sensations in response to apparently unrelated stimuli. . . . Results indicated that VR is capable of capturing elements of synaesthetic perception that other methods have been unable to, such as texture, small degrees of movement, and 3D structure.”

Rebecca Taylor, Sarune Savickaite, Susanna Henderson, and David Simmons. 2023. “Using Immersive Virtual Reality to Recreate the Synaesthetic Experience.”  i-Perception, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 1-37, https://doi.org/10.1177/20416695231166305

Farzanfar and Walther, in a comprehensive open access article, probe visuals that humans respond most positively toward.  They share that “the human visual system uses structural regularities in contour—lines that mark the outline of various shapes in a scene—to help us process information efficiently. . . . we found that aesthetic judgments of natural scenes were lower when line drawings of scenes were evaluated compared with when their photographs were evaluated. Line drawings of cities and other human-made artifacts, on the other hand, were liked more than their photographed counterparts. . . . an inherently more complex scene category, such as a city, is more likely to reach the optimal arousal point when presented as a drawing than as a comparably more complex color photograph. By contrast, natural scene categories are liked more as photographs than as line drawings, presumably because the decrease in complexity in the drawings moves them away from the optimal arousal point. Similarly, perceptual grouping cues such as symmetry that increase information gain are associated with aesthetic responses . . . and have been found to contribute to aesthetic judgments to some degree in our study.” This article is packed with details that will interest many designers.

Delaram Farzanfar and Dirk Walther. 2023. “Changing What You Like:  Modifying Contour Properties Shifts Aesthetic Valuations of Sciences.”  Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231190546

Pan and Jiang build on previously conducted research to identify implications of feeling awed; design can induce awe in multiple ways, for example via workmanship or material use.  Pan and Jiang probed “global self-continuity (GSC), a sense of connectedness among past, present, and future selves . . . [and] examined the relationship between awe and GSC. . . . We found awe positively associated with . . . and predicted . . . GSC.” 

Xinyu Pan and Tonglin Jiang.  2023. “Awe Fosters Global Self-Continuity:  The Mediating Effect of Global Processing and Narrative.”  Emotion, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 1618-1632, https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001187

Design can encourage nostalgic feelings, via images, objects, or scents, for instance.  Abeyta and Juhl’s work confirms positive effects of feeling nostalgic: they “hypothesized that nostalgia, a bittersweet emotion that entails reflecting sentimentally on the past, helps restore meaning for lonely people. . . . Results [of two studies conducted] supported the hypothesis: The relation between loneliness and meaning deficits was reduced among nostalgic individuals and this was driven by the fact that nostalgia (whether measured or experimentally induced) was linked with greater meaning for highly lonely individuals.”

Andrew Abeyta and Jabob Juhl. 2023. “Nostalgia Restores Meaning in Life for Lonely People.”  Emotion, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 1791-1795, https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001190

Rosa and teammates probed links between gardening and depression and their findings should support developing and maintaining spaces for gardening.  The team conducted a literature review and learned that “some horticultural interventions plus usual care (i.e., continuing normal routine for healthy people or treatment for unhealthy ones) may reduce depressive symptoms more than usual care alone, with most studies suggesting a moderate . . . or large effect. . . .  Our findings suggest that some horticultural interventions are effective and safe to use as a complementary strategy to reduce adults' depressive symptoms.”

Claudio Rosa, Talisson Chaves, Silvia Collado, Lincoln Larson, Kangjae Lee, and Christina Profice.  2023. “Horticultural Interventions May Reduce Adults’ Depressive Symptoms:  A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials.”  Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 91, 102112, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102112

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. Neuropsychological assessments and fMRI scans were administered at the beginning of the study and after 6 months. A statistically significant 226% improvement was observed in the enriched group compared to the control group on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and improved functioning was observed in the left uncinate fasciculus, as assessed by mean diffusivity. Minimal olfactory enrichment administered at night produces improvements in both cognitive and neural functioning. Thus, olfactory enrichment may provide an effective and low-effort pathway to improved brain health.” Scents used by the researchers were rose, orange, eucalyptus, lemon, peppermint, rosemary, and lavender.

Cynthia Woo, Blake Miranda, Mithra Sathishkumar, Farideh Dehkordi-Vakil, Michael Yassa, and Michael Leon. 2023. “Overnight Olfactory Enrichment Using an Odorant Diffuser Improves Memory and Modifies the Uncinate Fasciculus in Older Adults.” Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 17, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2023.1200448