Urban Planning for Psychological Challenges (01-12-18)
Whitby links environmental design and positive experiences for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). She reports that “Inclusive design enhances environmental competency and removes barriers to enable people to interact with their surroundings in the way they want to. Two disorders that can affect people's environmental competency are Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This scoping study found that interpersonal interactions were a key barrier to their use of public buildings. Affordances [design options] considered to benefit people with ASD and BPD . . . include . . . Nooks, niches and other semi private seating areas with good visual and territorial control. These areas should have good visibility of wayfinding signage. . . . Range of different lighting conditions and material pallets in different seating areas to allow for a greater range of choice by user. . . . Handrails in non-heavy traffic circulator areas as an alternative to navigating dense crowds. . . . Acoustic isolation between zones of function, with some directional noise information available within each zone. (Someone walking towards etc.).”
Maximilienne Whitby. 2017. “Scoping of Shared Spatial Needs During Public Building Use: Autism Spectrum Disorder (Sensory Overload) and Borderline Personality Disorder.” Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health, vol. 3, https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/journal-3---shared-spatial-needs....
Nature Lessons (01-11-18)
Kuo and her team have learned that outdoor teaching sessions have positive implications after students return to their indoor classrooms. The researchers report that “Using carefully matched pairs of lessons (one in a relatively natural outdoor setting and one indoors), we observed subsequent classroom engagement during an indoor instructional period. . . Classroom engagement was significantly better after lessons in nature than after their matched counterparts for four of the five measures developed for this study: teacher ratings; third-party tallies of ‘redirects’ (the number of times the teacher stopped instruction to direct student attention back onto the task at hand); independent, photo-based ratings made blind to condition; and a composite index each showed a nature advantage; student ratings did not. . . . And the magnitude of the advantage was large. . . . The rate of ‘redirects’ was cut almost in half after a lesson in nature, allowing teachers to teach for longer periods uninterrupted. . . . Such ‘refueling in flight’ argues for including more lessons in nature in formal education.” Lessons outdoors in nature and inside in classrooms were 40 minutes long and the outdoor classroom, in the Midwestern United States, was grass covered and had a view of some woods. Study participants were third graders.
Ming Kuo, Matthew Browning, and Milbert Penner. 2018. “Do Lessons in Nature Boost Subsequent Classroom Engagement? Refueling Students in Flight.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 8, article, 2253, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02253
Young Wayfinders (01-10-18)
Research completed by Lingwood, Blades, Farran, Courbois, and Matthews indicates that children may be better at finding their way through spaces than previously believed, which has repercussions for the design of spaces frequented by children, for example. The Lingwood-lead team “investigated whether children could learn a route after only a single experience of the route. A total of 80 participants from the United Kingdom in . . . groups of . . . 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and adults were shown a route through a 12-turn maze in a virtual environment. At each junction, there was a unique object that could be used as a landmark. Participants were ‘walked’ along the route just once (without any verbal prompts) and then were asked to retrace the route from the start without any help. Nearly three quarters of the 12-year-olds, half of the 10-year-olds, and a third of the 8-year-olds retraced the route without any errors the first time they traveled it on their own.”
Jamie Lingwood, Mark Blades, Emily Farran, Yannick Courbois, and Danielle Matthews. 2018. “Using Virtual Environments to Investigate Wayfinding in 8- to 12-Year-Olds and Adults.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 166, pp. 178-189.
More on the Benefits of Nature (01-09-18)
Data collected via a smartphone app confirms that there are psychological benefits to nearby nature. A press release issued by Kings College reports that Bakolis, Hammond, Smythe, Gibbons, Davidson, Tognin, and Mechelli found that among people in cities “(i) being outdoors, seeing trees, hearing birdsong, seeing the sky, and feeling in contact with nature were associated with higher levels of mental wellbeing, and that (ii) the beneficial effects of nature were especially evident in those individuals with greater levels of impulsivity who are at greater risk of mental health issues [higher risk of developing addictive disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, antisocial personality disorder and bipolar disorder]. . . . The results showed significant immediate and time lagged associations with mental wellbeing for several natural features: trees, the sky and birdsong. These associations were still evident several hours after exposure to trees, the sky and birdsong had taken place, indicating time-lasting benefits.” Findings are published in BioScience. More information about the Urban Mind tool [“an app that measures your experience of city living in the moment”] is available at urbanmind.info.
“Study Suggests Exposure to Trees, the Sky and Birdsong in Cities Beneficial for Mental Wellbeing.” 2018. Press release, Kings College London, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/news/records/2018/january/Study-suggests-exposure-to-trees-the-sky-and-birdsong-in-cities-beneficial-for-mental-wellbeing.aspx
Visibility! (01-08-18)
O’Hara and her team investigated macrocognition in pediatric intensive care units. Macrocognition is a scientific term for thinking done in the real world by real people; the alternative is thinking that study participants do in laboratories. For more on macrocognition, see this brief article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrocognition
The O’Hara lead group reports that “A focused ethnographic study was conducted including observation and focus groups. . . . Neighborhoods comprised of corner configurations with maximized visibility enhanced team interactions as well as observation of patients, offering the greatest opportunity for informal situated macrocognitive interactions [informal, thoughtful conversations]. . . . macrocognition is enhanced by. . . . NSs [nursing stations] with visibility within and between other NSs or nurse alcoves and short and straight corridors without columns or walls blocking views (or design layout to increase numbers of corners and maximize views).” O’Hara and team’s work builds on earlier studies which have shown that “Designs that allow coworkers to see each other in the inpatient or emergency department settings . . . enhanced the relationships between novices and experienced team members, improving task prioritization and increasing overall patient care unit expertise.”
Susan O’Hara, Robin Klar, Emily Patterson, Nancy Morris, Judy Ascenzi, James Fackler, and Donna Perry. “Macrocognition in the Healthcare Built Environment (MHCBE): A Focused Ethnographic Study of ‘Neighborhoods’ In a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.” Health Environments Research and Design Journal, in press; DOI: 10.1177/1937586717728484.
Looking and Seeing (01-05-18)
The information we take in with our eyes may not be processed in an entirely objective way. A research team lead by Witt of Colorado State University has, over approximately the last decade, published studies indicating that “vision can change as a function of action. . . . Among Witt’s best-known experiments: When baseball players are hitting better, they see the ball as bigger. When someone lacks fitness or is carrying a heavy backpack, they see a hill as steeper.” In a paper in Psychological Science, Witt, Tenhundfeld and Tymoski share that they asked participants in a new study to play “a game very much like Pong, a ball bounces across a screen, and participants use a joystick to block the ball with a paddle of varying sizes. . . . the ‘Pong effect’ is when the ball appears faster when the paddle is smaller, even though the speed remains unchanged. The Pong effect supports Witt’s hypotheses about actions influencing vision. . . . Witt added post-experiment surveys to gather data on whether participants guessed the experiments’ purpose, and whether their inferences affected how they saw the ball. . . .Few guessed the nature of the experiment (Bigger paddle = ball appears slower). But, critically, the Pong effect showed up regardless of the participants’ level of insight into the experiments’ true purpose.’”
Anne Manning. 2018. “Pong Paddles and Perception: Our Actions Influence What We See.” Press release, Colorado State University, https://natsci.source.colostate.edu/pong-paddles-perception-actions-influence-see/
Pink, Blue, Girls, Boys (01-04-18)
Children around the world seem to learn to prefer pink if they’re female and blue if they’re male. Yeung and Wong (both from the University of Hong Kong) conducted a study, published in Sex Roles, that is “the first to show that a boy’s preference for blue and a girl’s liking of pink is not just a Western construct, but is also a phenomenon in urban Asian societies. . . . ‘By applying gender labels, not only concrete materials such as toys could become gender-typed, but also abstract qualities such as colours, with children increasing or decreasing their likings for particular colours based on the gender labels available in their social environment,’ Wong says.”
“Pretty in Pink and Boisterous in Blue?” 2018. Press release, Springer, http://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-news/all-english-research-news/pretty-in-pink-and-boisterous-in-blue-/15327536
Park Use – Benchmark Info (01-03-18)
Cohen and team collected benchmark information on park use. They learned via “a representative sample of 174 neighborhood parks in 25 major cities (population >100,000) across the U.S. [that when] Park use, park-based physical activity, and park conditions were observed during a typical week . . . during spring/summer of 2014. [Researchers determined that] Nationwide, the average neighborhood park of 8.8 acres averaged 20 users/hour or an estimated 1,533 person hours of weekly use. Walking loops and gymnasia each generated 221 hours/week of moderate to vigorous physical activity. Seniors represented 4% of park users, but 20% of the general population. Parks were used less in low-income than in high-income neighborhoods, largely explained by fewer supervised activities and marketing/outreach efforts. Programming and marketing were associated with 37% and 63% more hours of moderate to vigorous physical activity/week in parks, respectively. . . . Offering more programming, using marketing tools like banners and posters, and installing facilities like walking loops, may help currently underutilized parks increase population physical activity.”
D. Cohen, B. Han, C. Nagel, P. Harmik, T. McKenzie, K. Evenson, T. Marsh, S. Williamson, C. Vaughan, S. Katta. 2016. “The First National Study of Neighborhood Parks: Implications for Physical Activity.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 419-426, doi: 10.1016/jamepre.2016.03.021.
Garden Use by the Elderly (01-02-18)
Shi, Tong, and Tao investigated the use of gardens by elderly people. They report that “Gardens for the elderly . . . have been revealed to be beneficial to the elderly’s well-being and quality of life. . . . one garden at a care facility for the elderly was studied through total site factor measurement, resident and staff interviews, along with observations. . . . level changes are found to be more influential [on use] than distance and shade.”
Shu Shi, Chau Tong and Yi Tao. 2018. “How Does Spatial Organisation of Gardens at Care Facilities for the Elderly Influence Use Patterns: A Case Study in Hong Kong.” Landscape Research, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 124-138, https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2017.1305345.
When Buildings Talk to Users . . . (12-29-17)
Khashe and team studied what building systems speaking to users should sound like. They found when they “investigated the effectiveness of different delivery styles (i.e., avatar, voice, and text), as well as the impact of communicator’s persona (i.e., building facility manager and building itself) and gender (i.e., male and female) on occupants’ compliance with pro-environmental requests. . . . that avatar is more effective than voice and voice is more effective than text on promoting compliance with persuasive pro-environmental requests. . . . results showed greater compliance with requests made by the persona of a building facility manager than the persona of the building itself. . . . participants were more likely to comply with the female communicator than the male communicator.”
Saba Khashe, Gale Lucas, Burcin Becerik-Gerber, and Jonathan Gratch. 2017. “Buildings With Persona: Towards Effective Building-Occupant Communication,” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 75, pp. 607-618.
Lighting Art (12-28-27)
Pridmore makes recommendations for lighting paintings. He suggests that “Major factors to be considered when designing lighting for paintings include colour discrimination, colour diversity, clarity and the balance of cool-warm (bluish-yellowish) lighting. . . . High correlated colour temperature . . . appear bluish. . . . low correlated colour temperature illuminants . . . appear yellowish. . . . a correlated colour temperature in the 4500 – 5500 K range [with 95-100 CRI] is recommended [for lighting paintings and other coloured artefacts] for cool-warm [balance]. This recommendation is supported by results of four recent experimental studies. . . .The cool-warm factor [in lighting] is . . . one of the major factors determining observers’ preference of illuminants for paintings.”
R. Pridmore. 2017. “Preferred Illumination for Paintings: Cool-Warm Balanced Colour Temperature Predicted from Radiometry and Colorimetry. Lighting Research and Technology, vol. 49, pp. 618-631.
Learning More About Learning (12-27-17)
Weir reviews recent education-related research. What she learned is relevant to the design of academic and professional spaces where people are trying to learn. Weir reports that “Koedinger wondered if [intelligent tutoring] systems might be limited by the constraints of learning on a flat screen. To explore that idea, his graduate student Nesra Yannier used depth camera technology and artificial intelligence vision to develop an intelligent tutoring system that watched 4- to 8-year-olds as they played a game that involved predicting and explaining what makes block towers fall on a simulated earthquake table. To test the potential added benefit of doing hands-on science, Yannier developed a computer version of the game where kids watched videos of towers from the earthquake table. Compared with students engaged in computer-based inquiry, those who observed real-life demonstrations learned more, both about physics principles and building sturdier towers. ‘The kids learn almost five times more from the 3-D physical interaction than they do from the exactly analogous flat screen interaction. And it’s more fun! They’re super excited about it,’ Koedinger says.” Related research findings were published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction in 2016.
Kirsten Weir. 2018. “Turning Classrooms Into Learning Laboratories.” Monitor on Psychology, vol.49, no. 1, pp. 64-67.
Situations and Wellbeing (12-22-17)
White and his team wanted to learn more about visits to nature and people’s impressions of their own wellbeing. They share that “Focusing on urban/peri [near]-urban residents . . . from a nationally representative survey of the English population, we explored the relationships between . . . types of exposure . . . and . . . components of SWB [subjective wellbeing]. . . . Controlling for area and individual level socio-demographics and other aspects of SWB [in other words, doing statistics that eliminated the possibility that these factors were responsible for the effects found], visit frequency was associated with eudaimonic wellbeing and a specific visit with positive experiential wellbeing. People who visited nature regularly felt their lives were more worthwhile, and those who visited nature yesterday were happier. The magnitude of the association between weekly nature visits and eudaimonic wellbeing was similar to that between eudaimonic wellbeing and life circumstances such as marital status.” Eudaimonic wellbeing is closely related to personal growth.
Mathew White, Sabine Pahl, Benedict Wheeler, Michael Depledge, and Lora Fleming. 2017. “Natural Environments and Subjective Wellbeing: Different Types of Exposure are Associated With Different Aspects of Wellbeing.” Health and Place, vol. 45, pp. 77-84, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2017.03.008.
Designing So Adolescents Ride Bikes (12-21-17)
How can design encourage adolescents to ride bicycles? Verhoeven and her team answered that question via an online survey during which adolescents (average age about 14) “were asked to indicate which of two situations they would prefer to cycle to a friend’s house. The manipulated photographs were all modified versions of one semi-urban street which differed in the following physical micro-environmental attributes (separation of cycle path, evenness of cycle path, speed limit, speed bump, traffic density, amount of vegetation and maintenance). . . . After each choice task participants were also asked if they would actually cycle in that situation in real life (i.e. intention). . . . Adolescents’ preference to cycle for transport was predominantly determined by separation of cycle path, followed by shorter cycling distance. . . . Higher preferences were observed for a separation between the cycle path and motorized traffic by means of a hedge versus a curb, versus a marked line. Similar findings were observed for intention to cycle. . . . evenness of the cycle path and general maintenance of the street were also of considerable importance among adolescents, but to a lesser extent.”
Hannah Verhoeven, Ariane Ghekiere, Jelle Van Cauwenberg, Delfien Van Dyck, Ilse De Bourdeaudhuij, Peter Clarys, and Benedicte Daforche. 2017. “Which Physical and Social Environmental Factors Are Most Important for Adolescents’ Cycling for Transport? An Experimental Study Using Manipulated Photographs.” The International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, vol. 14, article 108, http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12966-017-0566-z.
Thermal Pleasure (12-20-17)
Parkinson and de Dear studied links between temperature and positive environmental experiences. They report that “the experiments presented in this paper and the prequels in this series point to the importance of context, in the indoor setting and also the bodily state of the occupant, in determining whether a given thermal environmental variation will be” felt to be pleasurable or unpleasant. Parkinson and de Dear share that “A pragmatic design solution to the . . . individual differences inherent in . . . thermal preferences is to provide PEC [personal environmental control] options to occupants. . . . variables such as the target area, rate of cooling and temporal profile of peripheral heat should be controllable by the individual. By embedding PEC systems in workstations, occupants can create bespoke micro-environments that are capable of eliciting positive hedonic [pleasurable] tones . . . PEC permits this without the individual’s thermal preferences impinging upon the environment of others. . . . not everyone experiences the same quality or intensity of thermal pleasure from the same thermal stimuli.”
Thomas Parkinson and Richard de Dear. 2017. “Thermal Pleasure in Built Environments: Spatial Alliesthesia from Air Movement.” Building Research and Information, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 320-335.
Cleanability and Mirrors (12-19-17)
Consider using readily cleanable materials and mirrors together. Ackerman, Tybur, and Mortensen found that “pathogen cues [situations in which people were thinking about germs because of something they saw/heard/etc.] lead individuals chronically averse to germs to express greater concern about their own physical appearance. Correspondingly, these people exhibited behavioral intentions and decisions intended to conceal or improve their appearance.”
Joshua Ackerman, Joshua Tybur, and Chad Mortensen. “Infectious Disease and Imperfections of Self-Image.” Psychological Science, in press.
Undesirable, “Artificial” Art (12-18-17)
We prefer human-created to machine-generated art, except when we see robot artists at work. Chamberlain and her colleagues conducted several studies: “Study 1 tested observers’ ability to discriminate between computer-generated and man-made art, and then examined how categorization of art works impacted on perceived aesthetic value, revealing a bias against computer-generated art. In Study 2 this bias was reproduced in the context of robotic art; however, it was found to be reversed when observers were given the opportunity to see robotic artists in action. These findings reveal an explicit prejudice against computer-generated art, driven largely by the kind of art observers believe computer algorithms are capable of producing.”
Rebecca Chamberlain, Caitlin Mullin, Bram Scheerlinck, and Johan Wagemans. “Putting the Art in Artificial: Aesthetic Responses to Computer-Generated Art.” Journal of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, in press.
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