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Longer life expectancy and global population growth result in new environmental demands to meet different material and psychological needs across the lifespan. Since the physical environment is a fundamental factor in the quality of life, here we investigated which different indoor features (i.e., colors, materials/textures) have the most positive impact on individuals in terms of emotional reactions and whether these reactions could vary with age. Four groups of participants (i.e., younger adults, adults, middle-aged, elderly, age range 19–86 years) were presented with pictures of five different rooms: (1) Modern (white and cold colors with good-quality essential coverings); (2) Basic (white and blue colors; plastic and metal furniture); (3) Vivacious (red, blue, and green elements; soft-textured materials); (4) Comfort (different shades of blue and green; velvet coverings); (5) Nature (brown, orange, and green colors; wood furniture and leather coverings). Participants underwent a six-item questionnaire evaluating their positive and negative reactions to each image. The results showed a more positive evaluation of nature and vivacious rooms than all others. In turn, basic and modern rooms evoked more negative emotions than all others. Aged-related emotional reactions emerged, with the elderly appearing to be more inclined to rely on features, such as colors and covering materials, for the affective evaluation of the environment compared to adults and middle-aged adults. These preliminary results support the need for human-centered design approaches to improve well-being across the lifespan.

Several studies have shown that spatial information is encoded using two types of reference systems: egocentric (body-based) and/or allocentric (environment-based). However, most studies have been conducted in static situations, neglecting the fact that when we explore the environment, the objects closest to us are also those we encounter first, while those we encounter later are usually those closest to other environmental objects/elements. In this study, participants were shown with two stimuli on a computer screen, each depicting a different geometric object, placed at different distances from them and an external reference (i.e., a bar). The crucial manipulation was that the stimuli were shown sequentially. After participants had memorized the position of both stimuli, they had to indicate which object appeared closest to them (egocentric judgment) or which object appeared closest to the bar (allocentric judgment). The results showed that egocentric judgements were facilitated when the object closest to them was presented first, whereas allocentric judgements were facilitated when the object closest to the bar was presented second. These results show that temporal order has a different effect on egocentric and allocentric frames of reference, presumably rooted in the embodied way in which individuals dynamically explore the environment.

International audience; The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of mental representation processes during the planning, reaching, and use phases of actions with tools commonly used toward the body (TB, e.g., toothbrush) or away from the body (AB, e.g., pencil). In the first session, healthy participants were asked to perform TB (i.e., making circular movements with the toothbrush near the mouth) and AB (i.e., making circular movements with the pencil near the desk) actions both with (i.e., actual use) and without the tool in hand (i.e., the pantomime of tool use). In the second session, the same participants performed a series of mental rotation tasks involving body- (i.e., face and hands) and object-related (i.e., abstract lines) stimuli. The temporal and kinematic analysis of the motor actions showed that the time required to start the pantomimes (i.e., the planning phase) was shorter for the AB action than for the TB action. In contrast, the reaching phase lasted longer for the AB action than for the TB action. Furthermore, the TB pantomime was associated with the performance in the mental rotation of body-related stimuli, especially during the planning and reaching phases, whereas the AB pantomime was more related to the performance in the mental rotation of object-related stimuli, especially during the tool use phase. Thus, the results revealed that the direction of a goal-directed motor action influences the dynamics of the different phases of the motor action and can determine the type of mental images involved in the planning and execution of the action.

Outdoor urban lighting design is a complex issue. It involves multiple aspects (energy consumption, lighting pollution, aesthetics, and safety) that must be balanced to make sustainable decisions. Although the energy and environmental issues assumed a driving role in the optimization of the urban lighting design, its impact on the psychophysical well-being of individuals has received less attention. Artificial lighting has been shown to add several meanings to an individual’s experience of space: affective (affect, emotion, mood), cognitive (attention, imagination, perception), associative (memory, judgment), and motivational (closeness, openness, communication). Traditionally, studies on the effects of lighting on individuals’ emotions have mainly focused on indoor spaces, while the present study aims to investigate the influence of lighting on individuals’ emotions in an outdoor environment. Participants experienced a simulated urban park through virtual reality. Specifically, the urban park was shown with different combinations of overall illuminance (high vs medium vs low) and correlated colour temperature (CCT) (warm vs intermediate vs cool). For each combination, participants were asked to judge how they felt. In general, results showed that high-intensity cool light made participants more nervous, while warm light made individuals feel more tired and less motivated to explore the park. In contrast, an intermediate CCT at low or medium illuminance impacted individuals positively. Finally, it was found that participants’ mood predicted the impact that park lighting would have on them. These results suggest that assessing the influence of lighting on individuals’ emotions allows the decision-makers to implement the type of artificial lighting that will simultaneously safeguard both the well-being of individuals and the environment.

Egocentric (subject-to-object) and allocentric (object-to-object) spatial reference frames are fundamental for representing the position of objects or places around us. The literature on spatial cognition in blind people has shown that lack of vision may limit the ability to represent spatial information in an allocentric rather than egocentric way. Furthermore, much research with sighted individuals has reported that ageing has a negative impact on spatial memory. However, as far as we know, no study has assessed how ageing may affect the processing of spatial reference frames in individuals with different degrees of visual experience. To fill this gap, here we report data from a cross-sectional study in which a large sample of young and elderly participants (160 participants in total) who were congenitally blind (long-term visual deprivation), adventitiously blind (late onset of blindness), blindfolded sighted (short-term visual deprivation) and sighted (full visual availability) performed a spatial memory task that required egocentric/allocentric distance judgements with regard to memorised stimuli. The results showed that egocentric judgements were better than allocentric ones and above all that the ability to process allocentric information was influenced by both age and visual status. Specifically, the allocentric judgements of congenitally blind elderly participants were worse than those of all other groups. These findings suggest that ageing and congenital blindness can contribute to the worsening of the ability to represent spatial relationships between external, non-body-centred anchor points.

Is it possible to develop urban spaces that address the different emotional and well-being needs of individuals? This work seeks to answer this question by focusing on the role of urban parks in helping users to relax and/or recharge their energy. Participants were presented with 15 images depicting three categories of urban parks, i.e., Green Parks with only natural greenery and water elements, Colorful Parks with a mixture of natural greenery and colorful architectural elements, and Squares with urban furniture and some greenery. Their task was to rate on a 9-point Likert scale the extent to which each image induced calmness, energy, happiness, nervousness, tiredness and sadness (1 = not at all; 9 = very much). The results showed that Green Parks had a more positive impact on the participants' mood than Colorful Parks and Squares. However, Colorful Parks, as compared to Squares, were more energizing and alleviated sadness. Finally, while Green Parks were more calming than energizing, the opposite was true for Colorful Parks. These preliminary results indicate that different types of urban spaces can positively affect different dimensions of mood, from relaxation in green spaces to recharging in colorful spaces.

This study assesses the influence of valence and arousal of element/landmarks along a route on the spatio-temporal representation of the route itself. Participants watched a movie of a virtual route containing landmarks with high arousal and positive (HP) or negative valence (HN), or landmarks with low arousal and positive (LP) or negative valence (LN). Afterwards, they had to (a) imagine walking distances between landmarks, (b) indicate the position of the landmarks along the route, (c) judge the spatial and temporal length of the route, and (d) draw the route. Results showed that the tasks were differentially influenced by the valence and arousal levels. Specifically, participants were more accurate in representing distances between positive, rather than negative, landmarks and in localizing positive high arousing landmarks. Moreover, the high arousing landmarks improved performance at the route drawing task. Finally, participants in the negative and low arousing conditions judged the route as being metrically and temporally longer than participants in positive and high arousing conditions. These results are interpreted in the light of theories about the effects of emotions on memory processes and the “feelings-as-information” theory. In brief, the results support the idea that representations of a route reflect a combination of cognitive and emotional processes.

Interpersonal space (IPS) is the area surrounding our own bodies in which we interact comfortably with other individuals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping larger IPS than usual, along with wearing a face mask, is one of the most effective measures to slow down the COVID-19 outbreak. Here, we explore the contribution of actual and perceived risk of contagion and anxiety levels in regulating our preferred social distance from other people during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. In this study, 1293 individuals from six Italian regions with different levels of actual risk of infection participated in an online survey assessing their perceived risk to be infected, level of anxiety and IPS. Two tasks were adopted as measures of interpersonal distance: the Interpersonal Visual Analogue Scale and a questionnaire evaluating interpersonal distance with and without face mask. The results showed that the IPS regulation was affected by how people subjectively perceived COVID-19 risk and the related level of anxiety, not by actual objective risk. This clarifies that the role of threat in prompting avoidant behaviors expressed in increased IPS does not merely reflect environmental events but rather how they are subjectively experienced and represented.

This study examines whether the perception of an object automatically activates the representation of the direction of use of that object. To this aim, we carried out two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to explicitly categorise objects as used either away from the body (AB, for example, a hammer) or towards the body (TB, for example, a toothbrush). In Experiment 2, participants were asked to judge whether the same objects were natural or manmade. In both experiments, they were asked to respond by moving a joystick backwards (i.e., TB) or frontwards (i.e., AB). Therefore, their response could either be congruent (i.e., backward response with TB objects, frontward response with AB objects) or incongruent (i.e., backward response with AB objects, frontward response with TB objects) with the direction of object use. Results from Experiment 1 showed that in the congruent condition, participants were faster in judging the direction of object use than those in the incongruent condition (congruency effect). Crucially, results from Experiment 2 showed the presence of a congruency effect even when the direction of object use was task-irrelevant. However, this effect was found only for TB objects. These results suggest that the perception of TB objects automatically activates the direction of object use with respect to the body, thus showing evidence of direct connection between perception and action. A specific role of the body might account for different action representation processes involved in TB and AB object-related actions.

Separate research lines have shown that the way we process spatial information is influenced by individual factors, such as personality traits and basic spatial abilities. Alongside, recent studies suggest that environmental landmarks can be represented differently depending on their emotional content. However, to our knowledge, no study has addressed so far the issue of whether there is a relationship between individual factors and the way we represent and use spatial information that conveys emotional content. Therefore, this exploratory study aimed to (i) investigate the relationship between personality traits and the use of spatial strategies in relation to emotional stimuli, (ii) investigate if a different pattern emerges according to a body- or object-based spatial encodings. After watching movies of routes characterized by positive, negative, or neutral landmarks, participants performed a &ldquo, route continuation&rdquo, (RC, i.e., left/right decision) and a &ldquo, distance comparison&rdquo, task (DC, i.e., what was the landmark closest to X?). Furthermore, participants performed a mental rotation task (MR), the Corsi block tapping (CBT), and the Bergen right-left discrimination tests (B-RL). Personality traits were assessed through the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI). Results showed that a better performance at the RC task was associated with higher scores at CBT tasks in the positive condition and at B-RL test and agreeableness scale from TIPI in both positive and neutral conditions. Instead, the MR task positively correlated with the DC task in all conditions. In sum, individuals&rsquo, spatial abilities, personality traits, and task requests influenced the way emotionally laden landmarks were memorized.

This study aimed at comparing the time course of the activation of function and manipulation knowledge during object identification. The influence of visual similarity and context information was also assessed. In 3 eye-tracking experiments, conducted with the Visual-World-Paradigm, participants heard the name of an object and had to identify it among four pictures. The target object (e.g., ) could be presented along with objects related by (a) function (e.g., ), (b) manipulation (e.g., ), (c) context (e.g., ), (d) visual similarity (e.g., ), and (e) completely unrelated objects. Growth curve analyses were used to assess competition effects among semantically (a, b, and c), visually related (d), and unrelated competitors (e). Results showed that manipulation- and function-related, but not context-related objects received more fixations than the unrelated ones, with a temporal advantage for the manipulation-related objects (Experiment 1). However, the visually similar objects faded the semantic competition effects, especially for function-related objects (Experiment 2). Finally, no temporal differences appeared when manipulation- and function-related objects were shown within the same visual array (Experiment 3). These results support the idea that both function and manipulation are relevant features of object semantic representations, but in the absence of other semantic competitors the activation of manipulation features appears prioritized during object identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved). 46;1

This study aimed to explore the development of mental rotation ability throughout life by comparing different kinds of stimuli. Thirty-six children (6–9 years-old), 30 young (20–28 years-old) and 30 elderly people (60–82 years-old) performed mental rotation tasks with abstract (i.e. two-dimensional lines) and concrete stimuli (i.e. hands, human/animal faces). The results showed that overall young people outperformed children and elderly people, while children were less accurate than the elderly. However, the effect of age was shaped by the kinds of stimuli: (a) young people were more accurate than children and elderly people particularly with abstract stimuli; (b) elderly people improved their performance with images depicting faces; (c) children performed better with body-related stimuli than animal faces. Finally, performance was more difficult when stimuli were rotated by 180°, especially for younger and older females. We may conclude that the effects of age are modulated by the characteristics of the stimuli with a specific difficulty for abstract stimuli and a facilitation for concrete stimuli. As an innovative aspect, during childhood there appeared a specific facilitation for body-related stimuli, not just for concrete ones. These findings are interpreted according to embodied models of cognitive development and the effects of ageing on the brain.

In the domain of self-recognition, voice is a critical feature for self/other distinction. The aim of this study was to explore if people have an implicit and/or explicit knowledge of their voice. A group of healthy participants were submitted to an implicit and an explicit self-voice recognition task. They listened to pairs of pre-recorded auditory stimuli (words or pseudowords) pronounced by themselves, by a familiar or an unfamiliar person. Afterwards, in the ‘‘Implicit task’’ participants had to judge whether the pair of stimuli were pronounced by same or different speakers; in the ‘‘Explicit task’’ they had to identify if one of the stimuli was or not their own voice. Results showed a difference between Implicit and Exp licit tasks since participants were more accurate in implicit than explicit self voice-recognition. Moreover, in the Implicit task, participants had the same level of accuracy when they had to judge stimuli pronounced with self or others’ voice, whereas when an explicit voice-recognition was required, they were less accurate with self than with others ’ voice.

The aim of this study was to explore the role of motor resources in peripersonal space encoding: are they intrinsic to spatial processes or due to action potentiality of objects? To answer this question, we disentangled the effects of motor resources on object manipulability and spatial processing in peripersonal and extrapersonal spaces. Participants had to localize manipulable and non-manipulable 3-D stimuli presented within peripersonal or extrapersonal spaces of an immersive virtual reality scenario. To assess the contribution of motor resources to the spatial task a motor interference paradigm was used. In Experiment 1, localization judgments were provided with the left hand while the right dominant arm could be free or blocked. Results showed that participants were faster and more accurate in localizing both manipulable and non-manipulable stimuli in peripersonal space with their arms free. On the other hand, in extrapersonal space there was no significant effect of motor interference. Experiment 2 replicated these results by using alternatively both hands to give the response and controlling the possible effect of the orientation of object handles. Overall, the pattern of results suggests that the encoding of peripersonal space involves motor processes per se, and not because of the presence of manipulable stimuli. It is argued that this motor grounding reflects the adaptive need of anticipating what may happen near the body and preparing to react in time.

"The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a wind farm on individuals by means of an audio-visual methodology that tried to simulate biologically plausible individual–environment interactions. To disentangle the effects of auditory and visual components on cognitive. performances and subjective evaluations, unimodal (Audio or Video) and bimodal (Audio ? Video) approaches were compared. Participants were assigned to three experimental conditions that reproduced a wind farm by means of an immersive virtual reality system: bimodal condition, reproducing scenarios with both acoustic and visual stimuli; unimodal visual condition, with only visual stimuli; unimodal auditory condition, with only auditory stimuli.. While immersed in the virtual scenarios, participants performed. tasks assessing verbal fluency, short-term verbal memory, backward counting, and distance estimations. (egocentric: how far is the turbine from you?; allocentric: how far is the turbine from the target?). Afterwards, participants reported their degree of visual and noise annoyance.. The results revealed that the presence of a visual scenario as compared to the only availability of auditory stimuli may exert a negative effect on resource-demanding cognitive tasks but a positive effect on perceived noise. annoyance. This supports the idea that humans perceive the environment holistically and that auditory and visual features are processed in close interaction."

The purpose of this paper was to verify whether left and right parietal brain lesions may selectively impair egocentric and allocentric processing of spatial information in near/far spaces. Two Right-BrainDamaged (RBD), 2 Left-Brain-Damaged (LBD) patients (not affected by neglect or language disturbances) and eight normal controls were submitted to the Ego-Allo Task requiring distance judgments computed according to egocentric or allocentric frames of reference in near/far spaces. Subjects also completed a general neuropsychological assessment and the following visuospatial tasks: reproduction of the ReyOsterreith figure, line length judgement, point position identification, mental rotation, mental construction, line length memory, line length inference, Corsi block-tapping task. LBD patients presented difficulties in both egocentric and allocentric processing, whereas RBD patients dropped in egocentric but not in allocentric judgements, and in near but not far space. Further, RBD patients dropped in perceptually comparing linear distances, whereas LBD patients failed in memory for distances. The overall pattern of results suggests that the right hemisphere is specialized in processing metric information according to egocentric frames of reference. The data are interpreted according to a theoretical model that highlights the close link between egocentric processing and perceptual control of action.