Effort and Reward
Liu and colleagues’ conclusions are likely applicable more broadly than the tested condition. They found that “participants wearing a heavy backpack gave higher esthetic scores to and generate a strong attentional bias toward the...
Risk taking kids
Flouri and teammates report that “This study used the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study to investigate the role of greenness of the child’s immediate residential area at ages 9 months and 3, 5, 7, and 11 years...
Hearing and Thinking
Radun and colleagues investigated the effects of particular sorts of sound on cognitive performance and report that “Exposure to impulsive sound (65 dB LAeq) was compared with quiet sound (35 dB LAeq) and steady-state sound (65 dB...
Does how fast we walk impact how we perceive space?
Jia and colleagues studied when people feel crowded. They determined “that walking velocity depicts pedestrian perceived congestion more accurately than density. . . . the larger the gap between the desired and actual velocities,...
Get your children playing outside!
A research team at University of Exeter has identified some cognitive benefits of playing outdoors. They report, in a study published in Child Psychiatry and Human Development, that “children who spend more time playing...
Does living in a green space help us live longer?
Brochu and collaborators link how green an area is and the death rates of residents. They “conducted a nationwide [in the United States] quantitative health impact assessment to estimate the predicted reduction in mortality...
We Like What We Make
Straffon and colleagues found that “Self-made objects tend to be favoured, remembered, valued, and ranked above and beyond objects that are not related to the self. On this basis, we set out to test...
Keep lights low at night…
The Mason team reports that their “laboratory study shows that, in healthy adults, one night of moderate (100 lx) light exposure during sleep increases nighttime heart rate, decreases heart rate variability (higher sympathovagal balance),...
Infant cries and minor keys
Zeloni and Pavani share that “In Western music and in music of other cultures, minor chords, modes and intervals evoke sadness. . . . we asked expert musicians to transcribe into music scores spontaneous...
Does which way we face make a difference to how we feel about a space?
Yildirim and colleagues investigated, via a survey distributed in Ankara, Turkey, “the effects of location of closed offices on the front facade, rear facade and side facade plans and the indoor layout (left and...
What colour to paint café walls?
Cosgun and associates report the findings of a virtual reality based research project: “This study aims to determine the effects of wall covering materials (wood, concrete and metal) used indoors on participants’ perceptual evaluations....
Should you use dividing lines on your online shop?
Ouyang and colleagues report that “Many retailers use seemingly innocuous dividing lines to separate product alternatives on their websites or product catalogs. . . . a dividing line can influence consumers’ perceived quantity of...
The bolder the colour, the more we pay?
Garay, Perez, and Pulga probed responses to colour palettes used in paintings and report that “Most existing literature has ignored the potential effects that color intensity may have on art prices. . . ....
How sleep or lack of, affects our perception of people.
Investigators lead by van Egmond report (in a study published in Nature and Science of Sleep) that “young adults when sleep-deprived evaluate angry faces as less trustworthy and healthy-looking. Furthermore, neutral and fearful faces...
The larger the better?
Huang, Wang, and Chan studied links between image sizes on packages and evaluations of the contents of those packages; their findings can probably be applicable more broadly: “larger (vs. smaller) food images on food...
How do we decide?
If you are a company owner, how should your customer service look? Beeler and colleagues focus on judgments of digital assistant technologies, but what they learned can likely be extrapolated to other contexts: “ability...
Coordinating Our Thinking About Sensory Experiences
Scheller and Sui report that “When interacting with the environment, humans exhibit robust biases toward information that pertains to themselves: Self-relevant information is processed faster and yields more accurate responses than information linked to...
Mindfulness Better Unaided
Macaulay and teammates report that “Before and after a 20-minute outdoor experience, participants . . . completed surveys. . . . Participants were randomly allocated to one of four engagement intervention groups: mindful engagement,...
Living Near Green Space and Brain Performance
Jimenez and colleagues link exposure to green space and higher levels of cognitive functioning. They share that that by studying data from 13,594 women (mean age 61), they determined that “increasing green space was...
Working in the Metaverse
Wondering what it might be like to work in the metaverse? Read this article to find out more. Sam Gilbert, the author of the linked to article reports, for example that “The metaverse 1.0...
As the video gets worse, we start to shout…
Researchers have determined that “The more the video quality of an online meeting degrades, the louder we start talking, a new study by researchers at Radboud University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics...
More Walkable, Lower Healthcare Costs
New research confirms that walkability is good for us. Wali and colleagues examined “high resolution data for 476 participants in the Rails and Health study on health care costs, mode specific MVPA[ moderate-to-vigorous physical...
Where we grew up affects whether we get lost or not…
Ever wondered why some people you know always seem lost? Coutrot and colleagues report that “how the environment in which one grew up affects later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood. Here we used a...
How Music shapes our Accuracy
Santangelo and associates report that “music is frequently played while we are engaged in other activities that rely on decision-making (e.g., driving). . . . We analyzed response times and accuracy from more than...
It makes sense, so I see it better!
Rossel and teammates report that “Our study investigated the influence of expectations based on prior experience and contextual information on the perceived sharpness of objects and scenes… We manipulated the availability of relevant information...
Designing for All and Everyone
DeafSpace was developed at Gallaudet University years ago to spatially support people who are hard-of-hearing. As the article at the link below indicates, it is now being used to develop a major public space....
Windowless Dorms
We wrote before about the windowless dorm being built for students, and the negative impact it could have on them. Recent articles which report on the experiences of living in a windowless dormitory room...
Healthcare Costs Near Green Spaces
Van Den Eeden and teammates report that they “sought to determine if residential green cover was also associated with direct healthcare costs. We linked residential Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) satellite data for 5,189,303...
Less trees, hotter towns
Rouhollahi, Boland, and others conducted a study in Australia which found that “New housing subdivisions, smaller yards and a dependence on air conditioning have resulted in a 30 per cent decline in Australian residential...
Loud noises could give you a heart attack!
Avel Moreyra and colleagues that determined that “People experiencing high levels of noise from cars, trains or planes were more likely to suffer a heart attack. . . . Patients were divided into those...
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