Unit 19 Environmental Psychology

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1 Introduction 2 interface

1.1 Read the text title and hypothesize what the text is about. Write down your hypothesis.

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1.5 What do you know concerning this issue? List your ideas in the table left column “I know”.

1.6 If you know answers to these questions write them down in the space given after each question.

1.7 Circle in the list the words and expressions you know. Write down their translation in the table and calculate the percentage of your lexical competence.

Architects have long intuited that the places we inhabit can affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. But now, half a century after Salk’s inspiring excursion, behavioral scientists are giving these hunches an empirical basis. They are unearthing tantalizing clues about how to design spaces that promote creativity, keep students focused and alert, and lead to relaxation and social intimacy. Institutions such as the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture in San Diego are encouraging interdisciplinary research into how a planned environment influences the mind, and some architecture schools are now offering classes in introductory neuroscience.

The growth of the brain sciences in the 20th century gave the field a new arsenal of technologies, tools and theories. Investigations into how humans interact with the built environment began in the 1950s, when several research groups started analyzing how the design of hospitals, particularly psychiatric facilities, influenced patient behaviors and outcomes. The field has become known as environmental psychology.

Such efforts have already lead to cutting-edge projects, such as residences for seniors with dementia in which the building itself is part of the treatment. Similarly, the Kingsdale School in London was redesigned, with the help of psychologists, to promote social cohesion; the new structure also includes elements that foster alertness and creativity. “All this is in its infancy,” says architect David Allison, who heads the Architecture + Health program at Clemson University. “But the emerging neuroscience research might give us even better insights into how the built environment impacts our health and well-being.”

Higher Thought

Now research has emerged that could help illuminate Salk’s observation that aspects of the physical environment can influence creativity. In 2007 Joan Meyers-Levy, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota, reported that the height of a room’s ceiling affects how people think. “Ceiling height affects the way you process information,” Meyers-Levy says.

Her work indicated that elevated ceilings make people feel physically less constrained, the higher ceilings encourage people to think more freely, which may lead them to make more abstract connections. The sense of confinement prompted by low ceilings, on the other hand, may inspire a more detailed, statistical outlook—which might be preferable under some circumstances. “It very much depends on what kind of task you’re doing,” Meyers-Levy explains. “If you’re in the operating room, maybe a low ceiling is better. You want the surgeon getting the details right.” Similarly, paying bills might be most efficiently accomplished in a room with low ceilings, whereas producing great works of art might be more likely in a studio with loftier ones. How high the ceiling actually is, is less important than how high it feels. “We think you can get these effects just by manipulating the perception of space,” she says, by using light-colored paint, for instance, or mirrors to make the room look more spacious.

Natural Focus

In addition to ceiling height, the view afforded by a building may influence intellect—in particular, an occupant’s ability to concentrate. Although gazing out a window suggests distraction, it turns out that views of natural settings, such as a garden, field or forest, actually improve focus. A study published in 2000 by environmental psychologist Nancy Wells, now at Cornell University demonstrated that college students with views of nature from their dorm rooms scored higher on measures of mental focus than did those who overlooked entirely man-made structures.

By this theory, the modern world can engender mental fatigue, whereas looking out at a natural setting is relatively effortless and can give the mind a much needed rest. A number of studies have shown that when people look at nature views, whether they’re real or projected on a screen, their ability to focus improves. The thing is humans have an innate tendency to respond positively toward nature. We evolved in an environment that predisposes us to function most effectively in green spaces.

Using nature to boost attention ought to pay off academically, according to a study that was led by C. Kenneth Tanner, head of the School Design & Planning Laboratory at the University of Georgia. In their analysis of more than 10,000 fifth-grade students in 71 Georgia elementary schools, Tanner and his colleagues found that students in classrooms with unrestricted views of at least 50 feet outside the window, including gardens, mountains and other natural elements, had higher scores on tests of vocabulary, language arts and math than did students without such expansive vistas or whose classrooms primarily overlooked roads, parking lots and other urban fixtures.

Seeing the Light

In addition to greenery, the natural world has something else to offer building occupants: light. Daylight synchronizes our sleep-wake cycle, enabling us to stay alert during the day and to sleep at night. Nevertheless, many institutional buildings are not designed to let in as much natural light as our mind and body need. A lack of light can be a particular problem for schoolchildren. The Swedish schoolchildren were studied in four different classrooms for a year. The research showed that the kids in classrooms with the least daylight had disrupted levels of cortisol, a hormone that is regulated by the body’s circadian rhythms.

Adequate sunlight has also been shown to improve student outcomes. In 1999 the Heschong Mahone Group, a consulting group based in California that specializes in building energy-efficient structures, collected scores on standardized tests of math and reading for more than 21,000 elementary school students in three school districts in three states: California, Washington and Colorado. The researchers rated the amount of daylight available in each of more than 2,000 classrooms on a scale of 0 to 5. In one school district students in the sunniest classrooms advanced 26 percent faster in reading and 20 percent faster in math in one year than did those with the least daylight in their classrooms. In the other two districts, ample light boosted scores between 7 and 18 percent.

Retirement homes can also be too dark to keep circadian clocks ticking away normally. On tests taken at six-month intervals over three and a half years, the residents of the more brightly lit buildings showed 5 percent less cognitive decline than occupants of the six darker buildings did. The additional lighting also reduced symptoms of depression by 19 percent. Providing bright daytime light, the researchers believe, could have helped restore their proper rhythms and thus have improved overall brain function.

Researchers recommend using blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and full-spectrum fluorescent lights in buildings during the day; both have enough blue light to trigger the circadian system and keep occupants awake and alert. After dark, buildings could switch to lamps and fixtures with longer-wavelength bulbs, which are less likely to emit light detected by the circadian system and interfere with sleep at night. “If you can give people a lighting scheme where they can differentiate between day and night, that would be an important architectural decision,” says Mariana Figueiro, program director of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

A Room to Relax

Although bright light might boost cognition, recent work suggests it counteracts relaxation and openness—effects that might be more important than alertness in some settings. In a 2006 study counselors interviewed 80 university students individually in either a dim or a brightly lit counseling room. The students questioned in the dim room felt more relaxed, viewed the counselor more positively and shared more information about themselves than those counseled in the brighter room did. The findings suggest that dim light helps people to loosen up. If that is true, keeping the light low during dinner or at parties could foster relaxation and intimacy.

A room’s contents can be similarly soothing—or the opposite. Neuroscientist Moshe Bar of Harvard Medical School showed subjects photographs of various versions of neutral objects, such as sofas and watches. The examples of each item were identical except that some had curved or rounded edges, whereas others had sharp, squared-off perimeters. When asked to make snap judgments about these objects, subjects significantly preferred those with curves. Bar speculates that this preference exists because we associate sharp angles with danger. “Maybe sharp contours are coded in our brains as potential threats. Filling a living room or waiting room with furniture that has rounded or curved edges could help visitors unwind,” he says.

Furniture choices and seating plans can also influence human interaction. A better plan to encourage interaction, researchers found, is organizing furniture in small groupings throughout the room. The psychologists from Germany and Sweden examined seating in a different setting. Over eight weeks and more than 50 lessons, the researchers rotated a class of fourth-grade students between two seating arrangements: rows of desks and a semi circle of desks around the teacher. The semicircle configuration increased student participation, boosting the number of questions pupils asked. Other studies suggest that putting desks in rows encourages students to work independently and improves classroom behavior.

Carpeting can also grease the social wheels. In hospitals, carpet increases the amount of time patients’ friends and families spend visiting, according to a 2000 study led by health care design expert Debra Harris. Such social support may ultimately speed healing. Of course, carpeting is much harder to clean than traditional hospital flooring—and may present a health hazard in some settings—so it may not be appropriate for places such as an emergency room, where there is high patient turnover and plenty of mess. But rooms, buildings or wards that are home to long-term patients, such as assisted-living facilities, may benefit from carpets.

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